Romans Party Like There’s No Tomorrow, Defy Facebook Quake Talk
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About 1,700 Romans will party today like there’s no tomorrow, defying interpretations of the work of deceased seismologist Raffaele Bendandi that suggest a major earthquake will strike Italy’s capital on May 11.
For months Italian sections of social networks including Facebook have carried discussions about the research of Bendandi, a self-taught seismologist who died in 1979. He believed that earthquakes could be predicted by observing the combined movements of the planets, the sun and the moon. Since the planets are due to be aligned today, some Romans are worried that the first big earthquake in the Eternal City may hit.