The greatest recorded giant sea waves caused by earthquakes are listed as follows:
The oldest known giant marine earthquake wave, called "tsunami" by the Japanese and "hungtao" by the Chinese, is that which took place in the eastern Mediterranean on 21 July, 365 AD and killed thousands of people in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
The Portuguese capital was destroyed in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1 November, 1775. The Atlantic ocean wave, 6 metres high, devastated the Portuguese, Spanish and Moroccan coasts.
27 August 1883: The Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted, and the tsunami that washed over the Javan and Sumatran coasts killed 36,000 people. The volcanic eruption was so powerful that for many nights the sky shone with red lava dust.
15 June 1896: The "Sanriku Tsunami" struck Japan. The 23 metre high giant tsunami that swept over masses of people gathered together for a religious festival cost the lives of 26,000 people.
17 December 1896: A tsunami destroyed part of the embankment of Santa Barbara in California, USA, and the main boulevard was flooded.
31 January 1906: The Pacific Ocean earthquake wave destroyed part of the city of Tumaco in Colombia, as well as all the houses on the coast between Rioverde in Ecuador and Micay in Colombia; 1,500 people died.
1 April 1946: The tsunami that destroyed the Aleutian Scotch Cap Lighthouse with its crew of five, proceeded to Hilo in Hawaii, killing 159 people.
22 May 1960: An 11-metre high tsunami killed 1,000 people in Chile and 61 in Hawaii. The giant wave crossed to the opposite shore of the Pacific Ocean and rocked the Philippines and the Japanese island of Okinawa.
28 March 1964: The Alaskan "Good Friday" tsunami wiped three villages off the map with 107 people dead, and 15 in Oregon and California.
16 August 1976: A Pacific tsunami cost the lives of 5,000 people in the Moro Gulf in the Philippines.
17 July 1998: A tremor wave occurring in northern Papua New Guinea killed 2,313 people, destroyed 7 villages and left thousands homeless.
26 December 2004: The 8.9 earthquake and giant wave that struck six countries in South-east Asia killed more than 156,000 people
