The Day London Drowned in Beer 𺤳.
London had in 1814 experienced a catastrophe which had not been dreamt of by anyone, its streets were crowded with beer.
This occurred in a poor area of the city called St. Giles where Meux Brewery produced enormous quantities of dark beer. There were monstrous wooden barrels within known as vats. One of the vats was gigantic--22 feet high and containing over 135,000 gallons. What nearly a million bathtubs.
On October 17, 1814 the vat vapor and the iron bands enveloping it broke. It crackled open with a great bang. It was very powerful to an extent that vats that were near burst as well.
A tremendous stream of beer swept the streets. Walls broke. Homes flooded. There were people trapped and even killed. It was messy and oily and fatal.
Now it may sound humorous, but it was not. One stark reality of the flood was that when you put all that water in one place, it is bound to go bad.
St. Giles was a mass of demolished houses by the close of the day and rivers of beer. London never forgot it. It was a weird and the sadest retaliation of the truth that even the craziest of accidents cause death within a moment.