In London in 1666, fire broke somewhere in Pudding Lane, with the blaze raging for days to – basically – gut the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, though eventually extending past the wall to the west of London, and then swallowing almost the entire city.
@outragemag Heard of #GreatFireOfLondon before? #London has #TheMonument for that even if anti-minority (including #LGBT ♬ original sound – Outrage Magazine
The death toll, or yung dami ng namatay, is still contested even now. But some things are generally accepted as true, including:
- How the fire started in the bakeshop of the king’s baker, Thomas Farriner. So he is now eternally blamed for the fire, kahit na baka naman nakatulog lang siya dahil sa pagod sa trabaho. His boss nga eh, the king, did not know a single day of work because his position of power and wealth that came with it were inherited.
- The mayor at that time, Thomas Bloodworth, actually hesitated to make moves to stop the fire, though this is something we already expect from our politicians who – surprise, surprise – still manage to get elected anyway.
- There was blaming of the “others”, including immigrants, homeless people, and so on for causing the fire; this blaming of non-Whites is still common in the UK even now, even if the real abusers are those in positions of power as they make us fight among each other while they live in abundance.
Anyway, to commemorate what they now call as the Great Fire of London, and to mark na rin the rebuilding that followed, they established the Monument to the Great Fire of London. Also called as The Monument, it’s at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill.
Designed by Robert Hooke, and completed in 1677, The Monument is a column built of Portland stone, with a gilded urn of fire topping it. There is a viewing platform near the top, na ma-a-access through a narrow winding staircase of 311 steps.
Sa Pilipinas, wala nga tayong great fire, but we have the never-ending ultra-great floods. Our politicians don’t care, too, focusing sa pagpapayaman through nakaw. But we don’t have markers; instead, we just have ruined lives. So yung lessons all the way from 1666, all the way from London, walang nakakarinig, as we all just look at the monuments and not their lessons…
But off we go for more #LGBTQIA+ rampa…
The Monument is located at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill in the City of London.
