Skopje's earthquake 1963
July 26th, 1963. Skopje was leveled, paralyzed, almost wiped from the face of the earth. Only a few seconds were enough to turn 85% of Skopje into ruins. But the greatest damage was the irreparable loss of 1,066 human lives. More than 3,300 inhabitants of Skopje were lightly or badly wounded. Only 3 minutes after the first came another earthquake of the same intensity (8.5 degrees of the Mercali scale), followed by hundreds of tremors of smaller intensity. It was that dark Friday, of July 26th, 1963. Clocks stopped with their mechanisms pointing to the fatal 5 o'clock and 17 minutes AM, marking the longest day in the history of Skopje.