Slog AM: 8.8 Earthquake Rattles the Pacific Ocean, Columbia City Funeral Home Damaged by Fire, the Pacific Science Center’s Mechanical Dinosaurs Get the Boot 

At around 3 pm our time on Monday, one of the most powerful earthquakes on record hit the Kamchatka Peninsula, a remote region of Russia that has a population of 290,000. The people there surely felt it, but no one, according to recent reports, was killed or seriously injured. The world-historical seismic event triggered tsunami warnings in Hawaii, French Polynesia, Japan, Peru, and Chile. It seems our planet’s largest ocean was sloshing about like bathtub water bothered by a soap-lathering bather. This morning, however, almost all tsunami warnings have been downgraded, and the shores of our region of America—California, Oregon, Washington—only experienced waves that were more curious than destructive.