If there's a one thing about the history of London that the majority of the people knows, it is the Great fire of London, the fire that destroyed over a quarter of the capital city.
The fire begun on 2 September 1666 at 1 am in a bakery on Pudding Lane in the City of London. Thomas Farriner - the baker, his daughter and servants were all sleeping upstairs when the fire woke them up. Everyone managed to jump out the window and escaped,exept one maid that was too frightened to jump. She was the first of many sufferers of the Great fire. Experts say that Pudding Lane was probably one of the worst places to start the fire because of the amount of easily burning things.
A "funny" thing is that The Lord Mayor went out to look at the fire but he didn't consider it as a very serious problem so he went back to sleep.
The fire spread really quickly and the wooden buildings cathed it easily.The major problem of the Fire was an inadequate equipment to firefight that barely did help.The Great fire continued until September 5th. The effects of it were dramatic: around 13.000 buildings had been destroyed and between 65.000 to 80.000 people had lost their houses. London was covered in ash...
sources:
http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/story/the-fire/
http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-london/the-great-fire-of-london
On the bright side, a disaster like this gives the city a chance to build more modern infrastructure and buildings. It also allows for actually planning the city, which usually helps to make it nicer to live in.
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