The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery
(pictured) on 17 October 1814. When one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m)
wooden vats of fermenting porter burst, the pressure destroyed another
vessel, and between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons
(580,000–1,470,000 l; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were
released. The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the
brewery and swept into an area of slum-dwellings. Eight people were
killed. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that they had lost
their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was
nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from
HM Excise on the lost beer. After the accident the brewing industry
gradually stopped using large wooden vats, replacing them with lined
concrete vessels. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is
now where the brewery used to stand.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1886:
The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial
Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Arsenal_F.C._%281886%E2%80%931966%29>
1920:
Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army
ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in Cork, British forces burned and
looted numerous buildings in the city (aftermath pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Cork>
2005:
Demonstrations in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, against recent
violence towards locals turned into a series of race riots.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
for the taking:
Available; able to be taken without difficulty.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/for_the_taking>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to
the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught
to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible
Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand
of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.
--George Mason
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Mason>