Custard and coffee
On the morning of November 1755, Lisbon was struck by one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. It measured between 8.5 and 9.0 on the Richter scale, split the city center with fissures 16 feet wide, and killed perhaps 40,000 people (out of a population of 200,000). Shocked survivors gathered by the docks on the River Tagus, which had turned to a giant mudflat, littered with wreckage, as the sea mysteriously retreated. Many of them were killed by the tsunami that engulfed the city center 40 minutes later. Still, every cloud has a silver lining.
