The Great Stink: How a Horrific Smell Changed London Forever

In the 1858, London was brought to a standstill by something you couldn't see, but definitely couldn't ignore, the overwhelming stench of the River Thames. The event known as the great stink wasn't just unpleasant. It forced a modern city to confront a growing crisis of sanitation, public health, and urban planning. What happened that summer would reshape one of the world's greatest cities and change how we think about infrastructure forever. Learn more about the great stink of eighteen fifty eight and the smell that changed history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, grandpa. Wait. You did? Yep. On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say? Yeah. They're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast. Wow. Way to go. So about that picture frame. Forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Get in the game with the college branded Venmo debit card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance, just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card at venmo.com/collegecard. The Venmo Mastercard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA. Select schools available. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at venmo.me/stashterms. Max, $100 cash back per month. When looking back on the origins of the crisis in 1858, it's important to remember that London was one of the first great industrial cities of the world and faced unique challenges that no city in history had ever faced before. The driving force behind the Industrial Revolution during this period was the coal powered steam engine. These coal engines were extremely dirty and emitted exhaust and soot, which basically covered everything and would often just hang in the air. Writers of the era such as Charles Dickens provided stark accounts of the environmental devastation caused by the widespread use of coal. Their descriptions frequently painted a picture of factories polluting the air with smoke and contaminating waterways, such as the Thames, with industrial waste. Urbanization posed equally severe challenges for English waterways, especially in cities like London. London's population surged from 1,000,000 to 2,500,000 by the mid nineteenth century and exceeded 6,000,000 by the twentieth century. This rapid urbanization placed pressures on the environment that it couldn't sustain, leading to increasingly dire consequences and setting the stage for a crisis. In Charles Dickens' era, London's population neared 3,000,000 people, but its sewage system remained stuck in the dark ages. London's antiquated sewer system was little more than a series of underground channels. These took waste to the river, which also happened to be London's only source of drinking water. If you remember back to my episode …