The 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami remains the largest wave in recorded history and still drives coastal hazard science today. The other events of 10 July are a reminder that catastrophe, covert operations, and extraordinary human coordination can, improbably, share a single date on the calendar.
On the evening of 10 July 1958, three fishing boats were anchored in Lituya Bay, a remote inlet on the Alaskan coast. It was, by all accounts, a quiet summer night. Then a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck, ninety million tons of rock collapsed into the bay, and the water did something science had not yet properly imagined.
The wave that followed surged 1,720 feet up the mountainside on the opposite shore, stripping trees and soil in one catastrophic pass. That is not a misprint: 1,720 feet. Two of the three fishing crews in the bay that night survived. The crew of the Sunmore, Orville and Mickey Wagner, did not.
What happened in Lituya Bay permanently redefined what geologists and coastal scientists believed water was physically capable of doing. The event remains the defining case study in megatsunami research and continues to shape how coastal hazards are modelled today. It is the sort of thing that makes you reconsider the phrase “safe harbour” entirely.
Also on this date
Ten July is, it turns out, a date with a habit of making history in the most inconvenient ways possible.
In 1985, French intelligence agents bombed the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior while it was moored in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand. Photographer Fernando Pereira was killed in the attack. Two agents were arrested and convicted. France initially denied any involvement, then admitted it. The word “scandal” barely covers it; the phrase “state-sponsored terrorism” was used, and not without cause.
Then, in 2018, the final four members of a Thai youth football team emerged from the Tham Luang cave system after 18 days trapped underground. Twelve boys and their assistant coach had been caught by flooding on 23 June. An international rescue operation involving specialist cave divers, sedation, and round-the-clock engineering brought all 13 out alive. Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan died during the effort. It remains one of the most remarkable rescue operations of the century.
Three stories, three completely different ways history can arrive: as a wall of water, as a state secret that refused to stay secret, and as something that, against all reasonable odds, ends well. Today’s episode unpacks all three, and it is ten minutes you will not regret.