Plenty of disasters have struck London over the millennia, but the Great Beer Flood of 1814 has to be the strangest. On the 17th of October, about 1.4 million imperial gallons of beer flooded out of the Meux & Company brewery in a 15 feet high wave of foamy Armageddon. The wave roared through the streets of Tottenham Court Road in central London, flooding cellars, killing eight people, and injuring many more. The flood was caused by a ruptured vat that tipped over the other vats, causing them to spill their contents and create a tsunami of beer. Whilst there is no plaque to memorialise the beer flood, the nearby Holborn Whippet pub serves a special porter that commemorates the catastrophe each year. And IDW's Doctor Who comic (pictured above) included the disaster in one of their stories, with Amy Pond narrowly avoiding drowning in the boozy tidal wave. There was one silver lining to the tragedy: the brewery's owners received a refund for the excise duty they had paid on the lost beer. Are there any amazing and incredible facts you'd like to share about that most astonishing of cities, London? Leave your stories in the comments section!
Mike has lived in the UK, Japan and the USA. Currently, he is based in Iowa with his wife and 2 young children. After working for many years as a writer and editor for a large corporation, he is now a freelancer. He has been fortunate enough to contribute to many books on Doctor Who over the last 20 years and is now concentrating on original sci-fi & fantasy short stories, with recent sales including Flame Tree, Uffda, and The Martian Wave. Also, look for his contribution on Blake's 7 to "You and Who Else", a charity anthology to be released later this year.
You can find him on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/culttvmike
