President Obama didn't feel this week's Virginia earthquake much, because he was on Martha's Vineyard. But two other presidents wrote about being shaken by tremors in the White House.

White House Earthquake
© Yuri Gripas/REUTERSPolice close Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House is evacuated after an earthquake that was centered in Virginia Tuesday.
Has any US president experienced an earthquake? Of the seismic variety, we mean, as opposed to political upheaval?

We ask because President Obama has (so far) missed his chance. The magnitude-5.8 temblor that rolled from Virginia through the nation's capital on Aug. 23 was one of the strongest ever to hit the region, but Mr. Obama didn't feel it. He was on Martha's Vineyard playing golf.

He has also said he didn't detect the magnitude-3.4 earthquake that hit Washington in the early hours of July 16, 2010. He was asleep in the White House at the time.

Obama's not alone, of course. Most Washingtonians have never been through an earthquake, given that the mid-Atlantic isn't a tectonically unstable part of the world. But as near as we can determine, at least two presidents got all shook up to the point that they wrote down what happened.

The first instance involves a series of massive quakes - the largest to ever strike the eastern US and possibly the largest to affect North America since its settlement by Europeans. These were tremors in 1811 and 1812 centered on New Madrid, in what is now Missouri.

James Madison was the nation's chief executive at the time. "The re-iterations of the Earthquakes continue to be reported from various quarters.... There was one here [Washington, D.C.] this morning at 5 or 6 minutes after 4 OC. It was rather stronger than any preceding one, & lasted several minutes," Madison wrote Thomas Jefferson on Feb. 7, 1812.

The second president to feel the earth move was John Quincy Adams. He was in Washington on March 9, 1828, when one of the most violent earthquakes ever to originate in the region struck. "The window shutters rattled as if shaken by the wind, and there was a momentary sensation as of the heaving of a ship on the waves," wrote Adams that evening.

Interestingly, the Aug. 23 earthquake originated in Virginia about 30 miles from Montpelier, Madison's home, which is now a museum. Books tumbled and plaster cracked. According to museum staffers, those cracks almost certainly follow the exact pattern of damage done by the 1811 and 1812 temblors.


Comment: Let's not forget that in 1811 a Great Comet also appear in the skies. We've also seen a large spike in fireball sightings recently too. So it appears that unusual earthquakes may be associated with cometary activity throughout history. Let's also not forget the Napoleonic wars that were ongoing during this 1811-1812 time period as well. This may mirror the current US/Zionist conquest of the Middle East. All of these things appear to be connected, showing that social strife is also common around this times of geological instability and potential cosmic catastrophes.

To quote from P.D. Ouspensky's book In Search of the Miraculous where he summarizes the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff:
"There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coincide with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character..."