Gunpowder halts the fire
1666 · Event
With the king and the Duke of York working the fire-posts in person — passing buckets, paying volunteers from a bag of guineas — the navy's gunpowder blows firebreaks the pulling-hooks could never clear, and the east wind finally drops. The fire that destroyed a city kills, by the official count, fewer than ten people.
On these timelines: The Plague and Fire of London, England, Master, United Kingdom (combined)
More from The Plague and Fire of London
- Great Plague of London (1665)
- Great Fire of London (1666)
- The fire starts in Pudding Lane (1666)
- St Paul's burns (1666)
- Plague deaths peak at seven thousand a week (1665)
- Great Plague: London shuts up its houses (1665)
- Plague village of Eyam (1665)
- Wren proposes a new London (1666)
Around 1666
- Salem witch trials (1692)
- English Civil War (1642)
- Glorious Revolution (1688)
- Thirty Years' War (1618)
- Siege of Vienna (1683) (1683)
- Reign of Peter the Great (1682)
- Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687)
- Qing dynasty (1644)
- Peace of Westphalia (1648)
- English Bill of Rights (1689)