The Bay Area is about to get a major dose of 20th anniversary coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake of Oct. 17, 1989, which killed 63 people and injured over 3000.

If you weren’t here, the SFGate website is revving up coverage, and this 10-minute video is a good place to start. In the meantime, here’s a short glossary of terms you’ll hear thrown around for the next week:

Loma Prieta

A 3786-foot peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains (Google map) between Morgan Hill and Santa Cruz which gave its name to the earthquake, the epicenter of which was nearby.

1989 World Series (“Battle of the Bay”)

The baseball championship series between the American League-winning Oakland A’s and the National League-winning San Francisco Giants, Game 3 of which was about to get underway when the earthquake hit. The World Series ensured that the Goodyear blimp and other national TV infrastructure was on scene to cover the earthquake.

Cypress Structure

An elevated double-deck freeway structure, built in the late 1950s, which collapsed during the quake (picture above); part of Interstate 880 through West Oakland. Site of the most deaths from the earthquake.

Marina District

A San Francisco neighborhood built on bay fill soil which liquified during the quake, leading to building collapses, a gas leak, and the worst fire caused by the quake.

From Nov. last year, but posted recently as a NASA image of the day we bring you a killer 3D view of the San Andreas Fault running up the peninsula and out to see north of Pacifica. This project is about mapping which parts of the fault are creeping past each other with little “stickiness,” and which parts appear to be locked together—places where pent-up stress may be released suddenly in a major earthquake.

San Andreas Fault Satellite Imagery

To read more about NASA’s mission to map the San Andreas and related faults with radar imagery, please read Scientists Search for a Pulse in Skies Above Earthquake Country.

A story in yesterday’s Times of India profiles Rubin Moses, a famous Jewish cobbler who moved from San Francisco to Bangalore following the 1906 earthquake, married an Indian woman, and established a shop on Bangalore’s Commercial Street — the city’s main shopping street — that lasted until 1985.

Made me think — how many people who fled San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake spread something of San Francisco’s cosmopolitan culture elsewhere?