A bakery fire destroyed most of London — and, officially, killed almost no one

The Great Fire began in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane in September 1666 and burned for four days, destroying over 13,000 houses and old St Paul's Cathedral. Official records list only a handful of confirmed deaths, though historians argue the true toll among London's poor, whose remains the heat could have destroyed entirely, was likely far higher.

— Neil Hanson, The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London — 2001
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