Before my blog on earthquakes, two newsworthy items: The lull in the Iran War is over.  Iran lobbed missiles at American bases in the Middle East. Here is the backdrop: Way back in February, Netanyahu and Trump felt that, if they could surprise Iran with a serious series of bombardments, they could assassinate the Supreme Leader, plus many dozens of top government leaders, stimulating the people to rebel and overcome.  Israel and the USA could then swoop in, establish a new government, and totally demolish any nuclear ambitions. The USA/Israel did succeed in killing Ali Khamenei and 53 leaders.   Here is the complete list . However, Iran knew someday this would happen, and they organized a plan to take control of the Strait of Hormuz, and if necessary, also the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Here is the current situation. The people did not rebel, a new government formed and Iran has been able to maintain control over the two oil flow choke points. They also are not idiots....

Time  magazine this morning had this article:   What are the Five Strongest Earthquakes Ever Recorded? #6 was, of course, that massive Russian Kamchatka earthquake of 8.8 magnitude just experienced at 8:25AM local time on July 30.  Amazingly enough, there was only one death, but this was a woman in Japan while evacuating.  So there was none caused by the earthquake itself.   There was another 8.8 earthquake,  Chile in 2010 , which killed around 600, including 25 still missing.  So there is a tie for #6.  I happened to be in Amsterdam, Netherlands that day, but still wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled  Hawaii Tsunami?   You can click on that link to read the whole article, but I will provide a beginning here: I'm on an around the world odyssey, which you can follow through my   HuffPost postings . Well, my most exciting day is happening right in front of me watching the 8.8 Chile earthquake cataclysm on ...

The  Vera C. Rubin Observatory  atop Cerro Pachón in Chile recently experienced first light last night, and released the above photo. But before focusing on that new telescope, the latest summary of what is occurring in the Israel and USA vs Iran War, where controlled orchestration seems to be the mode of operation. Iran did "take revenge" at Trump's attack on its nuclear facilities by lobbing a few missiles into U.S.'s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar . However, Iran first alerted Qatar that this was coming, with a sense that we are not at war with you, but only hate America.  Sort of Trump saying we are not at war with Iran, but only its nuclear facilities.  There were no casualties at the U.S. base. Of course, Qatar informed the U.S., so the ten missiles were all intercepted and destroyed in the air. It seems that Iran had to satisfy it's people, so on TV exaggerated the magnitude of its attack. There are more than 50,000 American troops scattered throughout the Midd...