First let me say that my heart aches for the people of both Haiti and Chile who have experienced life-altering devastation in their countries. The following is not intended in any way to make light of the horror of the quakes.

Though it was incredibly devastating and sad, the earthquake in Chile has some really interesting stats... I have had conversations with several people lately about how really pretty interesting the quake was.

I looked online last night and compiled a list of the crazy things associated with the quake:

- It is the 7th biggest quake in recorded history, the largest was also in Chile, it was a 9.5 in 1960. The San Francisco quake was a 7.8

- It lasted three minutes.

- It shifted the Earth's axis by three inches and will change (shorten) the length of the days by something like 1.26 micro seconds (which is like one-millionth of a second). Apparently, the quake caused the Earth's spin to speed up.

- It caused an island off the coast of Chile to rise 2 meters.

- It was 500 times stronger than the Haiti earthquake; the Haiti quake was more concentrated, so that damage was more devastating in a smaller area, while the one in Chile was more widespread and less total destruction of areas hit.

- The tsunami waves that hit Hawaii, were not bad, and little damage occurred, it said that 8 foot waves washed up in some places, but was much less than they thought were probable.

- The quake also is said to have caused seiches(waves) on Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana (4,700 miles from the epicenter).