Who thought it was a good idea to put the main hall directly above the cesspit?
Erfurt Latrine Disaster
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#12I keep being impressed by the range of topics appearing on HN page one..
That's why we all love HN. Seriously. I love that it's not just about programming and such.
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#13[deleted]
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#14After that happened, I wonder how the peasants were able to recognize a king
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#15After that happened, I wonder how the peasants were able to recognize a king
Well, he was sitting on a stone part of the floor, so while he no doubt got splattered a bit, he didn't have shit _all_ over him.
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#16Interesting to think about the horrible ambient smell that must have existed even in these noble-class locations at the time. A wooden floor built over a giant open sewage pit.
My exact thought. Wooden floors — not even strong enough to bear the crowd — and the cesspool large enough to fit 60 people? That's not the place for king's accommodation, even in time when everyone was used to the smell of the stables. If anything, the ammonia would corrode the hell out of any metallic objects in the building, like nails.
Without reading German links, I suppose that either some architect had had a bright idea that a giant 640 KP latrine should be enough for every occupation, and thus wouldn't ever need to be scooped, or that people were mostly crushed by rubble, and the adjacent common-sized latrine also broke.
Though in some periods latrines were used to make certain chemicals, and therefore the building could be seen as what we now call a chemical plant.
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#17Interesting to think about the horrible ambient smell that must have existed even in these noble-class locations at the time. A wooden floor built over a giant open sewage pit.
Something smells off about this story. It’s got linked references but I can imagine this ending up being disproven as one of those fictitious Wikipedia articles.
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#18"about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement" I am so sorry to do this, but: What a shitty way to go. Seriously, though, the though of drowning is terrifying to me when it's clear, fresh water, but drowning in a literal cesspool sounds much worse. I don't know if the poor souls who died in this incident noticed the difference. But it sounds really terrifying. Also, the poor people who had to recover the bodies for a…
I would hazard a guess that many of the victims died from hydrogen sulfide poisoning.
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#19After that happened, I wonder how the peasants were able to recognize a king
Maybe they didn't know they had a king...
Re: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
#20Interesting to think about the horrible ambient smell that must have existed even in these noble-class locations at the time. A wooden floor built over a giant open sewage pit.
My exact thought. Wooden floors — not even strong enough to bear the crowd — and the cesspool large enough to fit 60 people? That's not the place for king's accommodation, even in time when everyone was used to the smell of the stables. If anything, the ammonia would corrode the hell out of any metallic objects in the building, like nails. Without reading German links, I suppose that either some architect had had a b…
"Saltpeter" AKA potassium nitrate was indeed harvested from latrines and other places where animal dung was collected/deposited. It was a valuable commodity as a key component of gun powder. Although gun powder would not come into widespread use in Europe for 2-3 hundred years after this event occurred.