Chile has seen its share of temblors, but the size of the 8.8-magnitude quake of February 27, 2010--and the tsunami it set off--was still cause for surprise. The United States Geological Survey doesn't even include Chile on a frequently-hit list (you can see most earthquakes in the region strike Argentina). A 2008 scientific paper argued that there's a potential for large quakes in far more places than previously believed, but that hasn't stopped some quakes from taking the world by surprise.