It was the eve of a fervent celebration planned for the Feast Day of Saint Joseph in 1906 when an earthquake struck the island of Ustica some 72 kilometers north of Palermo, Sicily, in the Tyrrhenian Sea.  On that unsettling night of March 18, the entire population woke up, panicked and rushed out into the street. 

The Usticesi managed to collect some things from their homes and left. They were very fortunate to survive.  Shock waves continued for almost a month, until mid-April.  On April 18, in a place very far away, a cataclysmic shutter and noise like the roar of 10,000 lions toppled 28,000 buildings, killing thousands of people. Now known as the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, it still ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time.