The London Beer Flood drowned several people

On October 17, 1814, a giant wooden vat at the Horse Shoe Brewery, run by Meux & Co, gave way in central London. The 22-foot vessel held hundreds of thousands of gallons of fermenting porter; when one of its iron hoops slipped, the whole tank ruptured and a torrent burst through the brewery’s back wall.

The flood poured into the crowded St Giles rookery, a warren of basement dwellings. Because it was a Monday afternoon, with working men away, the eight victims were mostly women and children — five of them mourners at an Irish wake for a two-year-old boy.

One survivor said the wave “burst upon me so suddenly as almost to deprive me of breath.”

A coroner’s jury ruled the deaths an act of God, so no one was held responsible. The brewery even won relief on the beer duty it had already paid. In time, the disaster helped push brewers away from massive wooden vats.