Re: « What's on your mind? »
Posted: 06 May 2020, 09:19
There's a new clock in town - just click it :
Spoiler
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/
By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”.
In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.
In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone.
There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses,each needing 12 horses per day,
making a staggering total of over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city each day.
The streets of London were beginning to poison its people.
But this wasn’t just a British crisis: New York had a population of 100,000 horses producing around 2.5m pounds of manure a day.
This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”
This became known as the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’.
The terrible situation was debated in 1898 at the world’s first international urban planning conference in New York, but no solution could be found.
It seemed urban civilisation was doomed.
However, necessity is the mother of invention, and the invention in this case was that of motor transport.
Henry Ford came up with a process of building motor cars at affordable prices.
Electric trams and motor buses appeared on the streets, replacing the horse-drawn buses.
By 1912, this seemingly insurmountable problem had been resolved; in cities all around the globe,
horses had been replaced and now motorised vehicles were the main source of transport and carriage.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-London-Beer-Flood-of-1814/
The London Beer Flood of 1814
On Monday 17th October 1814, a terrible disaster claimed the lives of at least 8 people in St Giles, London.
A bizarre industrial accident resulted in the release of a beer tsunami onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Farting-Lane/
Lurking around the back of the world famous Savoy lies an ingenious – if not slightly nauseating – piece of Victorian engineering; London’s last remaining sewage lamp.
The Webb Patent Sewer Gas Lamp was invented in the late 19th century by the Birmingham inventor Joseph Webb. In London the lamps were used for two main reasons;
firstly to burn off the smells and germs from London’s sewer system, and secondly as a low cost, low maintenance way to keep London lit up at night.
I'll have another Corona. 