Dead Drunk

effective rulers in Russian history. Catherine the greats was actually Prussian and her original name was Sophie. After she married into the Russian royal bloodline, she quickly took power and transformed the country from a stalled feudal state into a modern imperial power. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. It's ironic that Americans don't know much about Catherine, because

they might just owe her their country. The story of Catherine's involvement in the American Revolution starts in seventeen seventy five with a man named Sir Robert Gunning. He was the British ambassador to Russia at the time, and he was given a difficult task request Russian military aid in America. It was a tricky situation for two reasons. For one, Sir Robert needed to keep the British monarch, King George the Third from looking like he was begging, and second,

he really needed the request to be granted. The Americans were doing much better than expected in the war. They had both France and Spain on their side. Sir Robert and his colleagues carefully drew up a ten point treaty to present to the Russians, clarifying everything from the number of troops they were asking for to how much the troops would be paid. They wanted to come across as

competent and authoritative. Gunning first met with Catherine's foreign policy adviser, Nikita Pannon, who gave Sir Robert the impression that England's request would be granted. Why shouldn't two monarchs help each other out, But the matter still needed to be approved by Catherine herself. Sir Robert met with her and Nikita, expecting to finalize the details of the arrangement, but he

failed to realize that Catherine had other plans. She treated the request with some shock, and she would never agree to send troops to America. She thought that the whole America business was embarrassing. How could George have allowed it to spiral so out of control? Nikita feigned shock as well, claiming that he thought the request was to send troops to Spain and not America. To add insult to injury, Catherine dictated a letter for Sir Robert to deliver directly

to King George. She used over the top language to make it clear to her fellow monarch where she stood. She addressed it to my brother and claimed that the American Revolution was and I quote, a rebellion which no foreign power supports. Even so, she gave a firm no, in writing, nor can I stop thinking about what should have resulted from our own dignity if two monarchies and two nations had thus joined of our forces simply to

calm a rebellion. In other words, she thought it would look tacky for two monarchs to team up just to defeat the Americans. Little did Sir Robert know he was caught up in a larger web that Catherine was weaving. Catherine wasn't necessarily for or against the Americans. She followed the principles of the Enlightenment, which was an intellectual movement in Europe at the time, emphasizing reason over superstition and

the rights of a common man within a monarchy. So while she wouldn't have believed in the revolutionary concept of American democracy, she would have seen George's heavy taxation of the Americans as misrule. She also saw the opportunity to broke her peace in Europe. By refusing to support the English. She further isolated them as they were already at war

with France and Spain. You may have wondered why so few foreign powers intervened in the American Revolution, while in seventeen eighty Catherine formed the League of Armed Neutrality, a diverse coalition of nations like Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire that agreed to protect one another's shipping interests, and they all agreed not to enter the war on either side. By seventeen eighty three, England had no real allies, and they agreed to end the war with both America

and France. The United States was born, and there was peace in Europe. Catherine had established herself as a major player in European politics, perhaps she would have behaved differently if she had known how the future would unfold as centuries later, the United States is Russia's greatest international rival. Oh,

how curious history can be. No joke at the expense of an entire nationality is ever fair or good, whether aimed at underrepresented groups who can't defend themselves, or countries with a heritage that folks in a certain era had prejudice against. These wise cracks can often be insulting, but in very rare instances you can see how real events from history might have helped make those jokes possible. Take,

for example, the Great Whisky Fire. It was a real life tragedy that occurred in eighteen seventy five and one of the largest fires in the Irish city of Dublin's history. The fire began in Malone's Bonded Storehouse, a building in the Liberties, a Dublin neighborhood known for its pubs and distilleries. We don't know exactly what triggered the blaze, but in retrospect,

the situation was asking for trouble. Malone's storehouse alone held some five thousand casks of undiluted whisky and others spirits. This can be dangerous since the volatile, high proof spirits give off flammable fumes that can seep through the wooden containers, and on one hot summer evening in particular, those five thousand casks were a powder keg waiting to go off. Around eight pm that evening, smoke was seen drifting from

the storeroom. The first cask exploded, then another, and another, a chain reaction of bursting barrels, each one spraying hot, flaming liquor across the warehouse. Soon the entire building was a billowing inferno. As the walls collapsed, a river of flaming liquor was released. It flowed into the streets, igniting everything in its path and plunging the liberties into chaos.

In addition to pubs and distilleries, the neighborhood had several large tenement houses, as well as pens where livestock were housed. Soon the streets were teeming with squealing pigs, galloping horses, barking dogs, and entire families, all of them racing to keep ahead of the spreading blaze. Meanwhile, a crowd gathered to gawk at the fire. Some onlookers saw the river of burning whisky as an opportunity for a free nightcap.

While people ran home to get pots and pitchers, others simply knelt and cut the whisky in their hands or scooped it into hats or boots, and this revelry continued well after the authorities arrived on the scene. The police quickly arrested the most inebriated onlookers, some of whom were now trying to rescue barrels of whisky from buildings that had yet to catch fire. Meanwhile, the Dublin Fire Brigade

got to work controlling the blaze. Captain James Ingram quickly realized that the fire would be a challenge to contain. Dousing the streets with water would simply cause the flames to spread to new areas, since the burning liquor would float on top of the water. He tried building dams of gravel to block the flow, but the whiskey soaked right through, carrying the flames with it. At that point,

Ingram realized he needed something thicker. In a burst of ingenuity, he sent his men to the near by manure yards, where the excrement created by the city's countless horse drawn carriages was stored. The firemen came racing back with wheelbarrows full of dung, which they dumped onto the street to block the burning liquor, and this thankfully contained the blaze while rendering the whisky undrinkable. The fire and the party were finally over, but the cleanup was still getting started.

As dawn broke, authorities began to take stock of the damage. Adjusted for inflation, six million euros worth of whiskey had been destroyed, and that's not even accounting for the property damage or the physical injuries. And thirteen people had been killed, although curiously none of them suffered from burns or smoke inhalation. In fact, they weren't directly affected by the fire at all. All thirteen of them had died of alcohol poisoning from

drinking the undiluted whisky. History is full of tragic tales, none deserving of a joke, So let's remember the Great Whisky Fire of eighteen seventy five for what it really was, an accident followed by a party that ended in a curious disaster. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey

in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.