New documentary sources regarding the large earthquake (~M7) and its associated tsunami of 8 November 1905 in Mt Athos, Northern Greece. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Greece, Sp. Pub. 7, 15th International Congress of the Geological Society of Greece, Athens, 22-24 May, 2019.

Mt Athos, Northern Greece, is a monastic community with life since ~1000 AD, a UNESCO worldwide cultural heritage site that repeatedly hit by large earthquakes. On 8 November 1905 Mt Athos suffered a lot from an earthquake which shook the Balkan peninsula and had estimated magnitude ranging from 6.8 to 8.3. However, this important event remains little known since only very few documentary sources have been utilized so far. We collected a set of new documentary sources, ignored so far by the seismological community, including contemporary press reports, letters and manuscripts. Based on these sources we reconstructed the earthquake impact field and organized a data base which contains assignment of macroseismic intensity in 42 observation points, at epicentral distances up to ~660 km, and an identification of several sites where a variety of co-seismic ground failures were reported, the most important being landslides and sizable rockfalls. From magnitude-intensity relationships based on data of instrumental Greek earthquakes, macroseismic magnitude of ~7 equivalent to Ms was estimated, which is close to the most recent, reliable instrumental estimates of ~7.2. The examined sources revealed for the first time that earthquake-triggered landslides occurred in the southern tip of Mt Athos producing a local but powerful tsunami of ~3 m run-up. Eleven persons were reportedly killed.