GeologyRocks

The BGS and USGS both have earthquake stats, though I doubt they go back to 1914. Might try there?

I'm not sure about the stats for this but I seem to remember it being brought up whilst I was at uni as an example to illustrate why sources of data should be carefully checked.

It could be said that there have been more earthquakes in the past hundred years than in previous periods of time. If you look at the data it backs this up, there have been substantially more recorded earthquakes in the last 100 years than in previous centuries. This is simply because there have been more monitoring instruments deployed over the past 100 years and these instruments have become increasingly more sophisticated and sensitive.

However, you mention determining whether the earthquakes have been 'worse'. Does this mean more powerful or more damaging? As there are the two different scales set up to monitor these; the (often mis-quoted) Richter scale and the Mercalli scale. Again, you would expect earthquakes to become more damaging over the past 100 years due to massive population growth and increasing urbanisation, but this does not necessarily mean that earthquakes have got more powerful.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to know what you find out. Keep us posted.

Your friend is talking absolute bollox

See here

and here

This is something that a surprising number of people don't remember over many topics. They all assume we have this same level of data that we have now for the last billion years. By just looking at the graph of reported tornados, you'd think the world is heading to oblivion from destruction by them in a short number of years if the growth pattern holds. But what the graph doesn't tell you is that there are a lot more people around to actually see the tornados and report them, whereas before many would touch down in some rural area and never be seen. And with climate change, people take the recored temperatures from 500 years ago and say the data is just as good as with the instruments we have today, or that ice coring can do the same for 100,000 years ago (I'm not talking down on ice coring, it's a great thing, it's just not pinpoint accurate like our tools of today). and then of course people think that the last 100 years is basically the entirety of earth's existence by the way they believe only that time period matters and looks intricately to find anomolies or patterns when in reality that time period is so short by geological time frames that it's almost laughable to be so short-sighted.