A 4.5-metre wave of beer killed 8 people in 1814

17 October 1814, London: a 610,000-litre vat burst at the Meux brewery and buried eight houses in the St Giles slums.

The vat stood nine metres tall and had been fermenting porter — the black beer favoured by London labourers — for ten months. One of the iron hoops, thumb-thick, snapped from corrosion around half past five in the afternoon. Within seconds, the pressure blew apart the neighbouring casks and a three-and-a-half-metre wave surged down New Street with the force of four loaded buses.

The neighbourhood hit, the St Giles Rookery, was London's poorest: wooden houses with entire families in a single room, many of them holding wakes because a two-year-old boy had died the night before. The wave brought down two buildings, flooded the cellars where the children slept, and drowned Mary Banfield and her daughter Hannah in the kitchen, Anne Saville at the wake, and five others from the street. The final count: eight dead, all women and children between three and sixty-three.

Meux and Co. paid no compensation. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of 'accidental death and by misfortune' — a legal formula to spare the company — and Parliament granted a refund of the excise duty on 7,664 barrels lost: the brewery recovered around £7,250 and kept brewing porter until 1922.