History of the World: Famous Fires
If you're a good sleuth—I mean, if you could really give Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew a run for their money—then you might have noticed that the _floss has a book coming out at the end of the month. That means we have roughly 400 pages jam-packed with fascinating flossiness to share with you. It comes out October 28, so between now and then, we thought we'd feature some of our favorite bits. I've been through it three or four times now and I find something new and interesting every time—hopefully you'll agree!
During the night of July 18, 64 CE, a fire broke out in the shops near the Circus Maximus, the city's mammoth stadium. It spread quickly and lasted more than a week, destroying more than 70 percent of Rome. Who was the culprit? Romans had their eyes on Nero, who made no bones about wanting a new palace in the center of the city. The Senate held him off because they didn't want to tear down perfectly good buildings just to make his (not-so) humble abode, so obviously citizens assumed Nero took things into his own hands. It was even said that Nero's thugs stopped people who tried to put the fire out. But, truth be told, Nero wasn't even in town. When he heard, he rushed back to Rome and did what he could to help. But Romans weren't convinced of his innocence, so he pointed the finger at Christians and had hundreds executed horribly and painfully. In reality, the fire probably did start by accident, although some historians still blame Nero and some think the more zealous Christians could have actually started it by trying to fulfill Biblical prophecies.
The Globe Theater
It's easy to be snooty about your Shakespeare knowledge these days, or feel a little high brow if you're attending a stage production of King Lear or something. But in Shakespeare's time, the experience was actually really bawdy. The Globe was located in the same neighborhood as buildings that hosted cockfights, the place was lousy with pickpockets and it was totally commonplace for theatergoers to yell at the actors and throw things at the stage. With such craziness and riot-like crowds, it's not that surprising that a theatrical cannon went off in the wrong direction, hit the rafters and started a fire. The fire burned the Globe to the ground, but miraculously, records show that only one person was hurt. That's pretty amazing considering that the Globe often packed in 3,000 people for one play. And the one guy who was injured? Well, that was his own fault. When his pants caught on fire, he thought it would be best to extinguish the flames by dousing them with ale.
On September 2, 1923, a four-minute, 7.4-on-the-Richter-scale earthquake rocked Tokyo. It definitely did some damage, but worse were the fires that popped up everywhere afterward. It happened right around lunchtime, so thousands of stoves were lit. This resulted in, well, thousands of little fires that joined up with the large ones already in progress. All in all, the death toll was more than 130,000 with more than 700,000 residences destroyed. Worse, though, all of the mayhem created rumors that Japan was being invaded, so vigilante mobs started beating and killing non-Japanese, especially Koreans.
OK, it's a different type of fire, but a fire nonetheless. Dante Alighieri pretty much based his Inferno on creative ways of torturing people throughout history whom he really hated. Despite being more than a vengeful and, you know, creepy, it was actually a really good thing: he wrote in his native Italian, so ordinary people were able to read his writings. His books were so influential that a lot of his spellings and grammar have carried over into modern Italian.
It's the greatest deal in the history of history books! Our first hardback, The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through History's Best Bits, hits stores later this month, and we're so excited that we've teamed up with the fine folks at Amazon.com to give you a special deal. Pre-order the book before October 27th and we'll throw in 6 FREE MONTHS of mental_floss magazine! Just click here to get the deal now.
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