“The streets full of nothing but people and horses and carts loaded with goods, ready to run over one another… we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill, for an arch of above a mile long; it made me weep to see it.” What is British diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) describing?
Answer: The Great Fire of London of 1666. London was the largest city in Britain with over 80,000 inhabitants. Starting in a small bakery, more than 13,000 houses were destroyed and over 70,000 people lost their homes. The fire ended the Great Plague that had killed over 68,000 people in the previous two years
Source: The Broadview Anthology of British Literature by Joseph Black et. al
More at: History
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