A closer look
On All Saints' Day in 1755, a massive 8.5-magnitude earthquake leveled Lisbon, followed immediately by a tsunami and a six-day firestorm that specifically targeted the city's overflowing churches. This triple-whammy disaster didn't just break buildings; it utterly broke the era's dominant philosophical vibe. The Enlightenment's popular concept of 'optimism'—the steadfast idea that God made this the 'best of all possible worlds'—couldn't hold up to an entire pious city being liquified on a major holy day. Voltaire got so wildly cynical about the body count that he basically invented modern dark comedy by writing 'Candide'.
