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This Happened

This Happened—January 17: The Kobe Quake

On this day in 1995, the Great Hanshin, or Kobe, earthquake rocked Japan.

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What happened during the Kobe earthquake?

The Kobe earthquake struck at 5:46 am in the Japanese coastal city of Kobe. It lasted about 20 seconds and registered as a magnitude 6.9 (7.3 on the Richter scale). The death toll was 6,434 people killed.

Why was the Kobe earthquake so destructive?

The main transport routes in the area closely parallel the shoreline of Osaka Bay, so many bridge pilings and bents were displaced, causing catastrophic damage to their supported structures. In the earthquake, damage to highway bridges was widespread, causing many deaths.

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Society

Mapping The Patriarchy: Where Nine Out Of 10 Streets Are Named After Men

The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.

Photo of Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Eugenia Nicolosi

ROME — The culture at the root of violence and discrimination against women is not taught in school, but is perpetuated day after day in the world around us: from commercial to cultural products, from advertising to toys. Even the public spaces we pass through every day, for example, are almost exclusively dedicated to men: war heroes, composers, scientists and poets are everywhere, a constant reminder of the value society gives them.

For the past few years, the study of urban planning has been intertwined with that of feminist toponymy — the study of the importance of names, and how and why we name things.

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