At 5:04, this morning, Friday, July 16th, a date which shall live in my memory, the DC area, which is where I live, was shaken by what, as earthquake goes, was a minor earthquake, a 3.6 magnitude quake, centered in a DC suburb.

Minor Quake? When I am in an earthquake, it is an EARTHQUAKE!!! It is not minor.

At the time the quake shook, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was strange shaking.

I was up writing. The house started shaking, rumbling and shaking. I looked out the window at the street to see if big trucks were passing. The street was quiet. Most people were asleep. The rumbling stopped. I learned what it was, during my routine search on the web, checking for the overnight news. I saw the notice that the DC area had an earthquake. EARTHQUAKE! D.C. was rattled by area's largest recorded earthquake -- so went the reports. 'It started as a low audible rumble that built to a crescendo.'

Great Scott! An earthquake in the Nation's Capitol. Time to go to morning Mass, and I am not Catholic!

I have lived in the Capitol for years and this morning was the first time I've experienced an earthquake. Think, last month, Jun 23rd, the Capitol of Canada was hit by a quake. Now, the Capitol of the U.S. Is somebody trying to tell us something?

Web reports remind the nervous that there have been quakes in the DC area before -- but they were much weaker. Nothing like the one this morning. There was a 2.6 magnitude quake in 1990. In 1828 then President John Quincy Adams lived through an earthquake in  Washington. " Lived through" is a little dramatic choice of words. Any way, then President Adams wrote in his diary what a quake in DC felt like.

Do you know I felt a little like the way John Quincy Adams felt in 1828. Former President Adams wrote: "There was this evening the shock of an earthquake, the first which I ever distinctly noticed at the moment when it happened.. I was writing in this book --" (I was at my computer writing, working on my novel.) -- "when the table began to shake under my hand and the floor under my feet." -- ( My desk began to shake, and the floor, and the whole house.) -- "The window shutters rattled as if shaken by the wind," -- (Well, the windows didn't rattle. They're modern thermo guard windows, well fitted into their frames. The house was shaking. The windows as part of the house were shaking too.) -- "and there was a momentary sensation as of the heaving of a ship on the waves." -- (I thought I was heard an army of heavy cement construction trucks passing) -- "It continued about two minutes, then ceased." --  (I don't think this quake lasted for two minutes. Maybe less than a minute. Maybe less than half a minute) --" It was about eleven at night" -- (It was around five a.m.) -- "I immediately left writing, and went to my bedchamber, where my wife was in bed, much alarmed." -- (I was writing in my bedroom. I looked around the house. The rumbling woke up one person. Everyone else was sound asleep).

Anyway, John Quincy Adams, who is on the list of my favorite Americans, and I experienced a rare Washington experience, not rare enough, an earthquake that shook DC.