At the beginning of the 20th century, San Francisco, a vibrant city full of people from different cultures, was in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution. At the time, the brilliant inventions of airplanes, automobiles, and radios were changing the daily lives of many. San Francisco had just recovered from the burden of four years of bubonic plague (“Bubonic”). However, just when the situation was returning to normal, a destructive earthquake struck the city on April 18, 1906. Although the quake lasted less than a minute, the devastated city resulted in the collapse of buildings and considerable loss of life. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake consisted not only of earthquakes, but also of even more destructive fires; it had a devastating effect on the city and its people, but it provided much of the knowledge seismologists have today and allowed San Francisco to establish itself as a place of intriguing buildings and structures. Since studying the science behind the San Francisco earthquake, scientists have made a number of important discoveries about how earthquakes work. At 5:12 on a fateful April morning in 1906, the giant Pacific and North American plates collided at an astonishing twenty-one feet along the San Andreas Fault, exceeding the annual average by two inches ("Earthquake of San Francisco of 1906" ) (“The Great Earthquake and Fires of 1906”). Seconds later the destructive earthquake occurred. The ground moved at nearly five feet per second, and tremors could be felt from southern Oregon to southern Los Angeles to central Nevada ("Rapid") ("The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906"). In fact, the earthquake could be recorded in a seismograph in Cape Town, South Africa, at an astonishing 10,236 miles away... middle of paper... and caused the city to collapse and the government to pay sums extremes of money. Furthermore, residents of San Francisco and other surrounding areas have suffered as a result. Thousands of people died, but even more faced the burden of homelessness. As if the situation couldn't get any worse, the fires continued for three days. However, San Francisco transformed like a phoenix; its ashes transformed in a few months into a beautiful city full of fascinating buildings. 1906, the year of a major natural disaster, also became a year that gave rise to knowledge in the field of seismology. No one will ever forget the frightening chain of events that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake not only taught seismologists nearly everything they now know, but also made San Francisco the West Coast jewel it is today.