• The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906.

• At the time 375 deaths were reported and 189 people were missing. Government officials felt that reporting the true death toll would hurt real estate prices and efforts to rebuild the city.

• The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was caused by a rupture on the San Andreas fault line that forms part of the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North America Plate. This fault runs the length of California from the Salton Sea. a distance of about 800 miles (1,300 km).