Sponsored by
20 Million Pounds Lost With Method
The secret to lasting progress isn’t extreme diets or all-or-nothing routines—it’s small, consistent actions that actually fit your life. This science-backed approach helps you lose weight through simple, sustainable habits designed to work with your lifestyle, not against it—without restrictive meal plans or overwhelming gym schedules.
The results speak for themselves: users have already lost over 20 million pounds.
Take the quiz to get your personalized plan and stay accountable with small daily actions (plus a surprisingly honest companion to help keep you on track).
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR, MASTERS OF TRIVIA
Trivia is more than a game; it’s a global tradition of knowledge and competition. Masters of Trivia’s tournaments have gone live, with 30 fast, multiple-choice questions. Most correct wins. Speed breaks ties. Compete worldwide for a $MOT token prize purse, plus valuable in-kind prizes.
Get the entry link and reminders by email — subscribe free at PlayMOT.
—— ON THIS DAY ——
SEPTEMBER 2, 1666
London, England
360 years ago
The Great Fire of London, which began in Pudding Lane in the early hours of September 2, 1666, and destroyed the medieval heart of the city over four days.
In the small hours of Sunday, September 2, 1666, a fire broke out in the house of Thomas Farriner, a baker in Pudding Lane, close to London Bridge. Fires were common in a city built largely of timber, pitch, and thatch, and the Lord Mayor, roused from bed and shown the blaze, is said to have dismissed it contemptuously and gone back to sleep. A strong easterly wind carried sparks into the tightly packed streets and into riverside warehouses stocked with tar, oil, coal, and brandy. By morning the fire was beyond control.
It burned for four days. Londoners fled with what they could carry, clogging the streets and the river with carts and boats. The medieval cathedral of St Paul's, whose stone was thought to make it safe, caught when its wooden scaffolding ignited, and the lead of its roof ran molten down the streets. The fire was finally halted by a combination of the wind dropping and the demolition of buildings to create firebreaks, a measure the authorities had been reluctant to authorize because of the cost of compensating owners.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
St Paul's Cathedral, the medieval cathedral destroyed in the fire and rebuilt by Christopher Wren in the decades that followed, becoming the defining landmark of the new London.
The destruction was enormous. Contemporary estimates put the losses at around thirteen thousand two hundred houses, eighty-seven parish churches, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall, and St Paul's Cathedral. Roughly four fifths of the walled city was gone, and perhaps seventy thousand of the city's eighty thousand inhabitants within the walls were left homeless. The official death toll was recorded as fewer than ten, a figure historians have long doubted, since the deaths of the poor were poorly recorded and the heat in some places was intense enough to leave little behind.
The disaster came a year after the Great Plague had killed perhaps a fifth of London's population, and the combination left the city traumatized and looking for someone to blame. Rumors spread that the fire had been set by foreign agents, and a French watchmaker named Robert Hubert confessed to starting it. His confession was almost certainly false, and evidence later emerged that he had not even been in the country when the fire began, but he was hanged for it in October 1666.
Rebuilding began almost immediately. Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, and others proposed grand plans to replace the medieval tangle with broad avenues and open squares, but the practical difficulties of property rights meant the city was largely rebuilt on its old street plan. What did change was the building itself. New regulations required brick and stone rather than timber, wider streets, and better access to water. Wren designed a new St Paul's and more than fifty parish churches. Fire insurance emerged as an industry in the years that followed. The fire that destroyed London also produced the safer, more modern city that replaced it.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
It destroyed medieval London and forced the city to rebuild in a modern form. New building regulations requiring brick and stone, wider streets, and improved water access transformed the physical fabric of the capital and reduced the risk of another catastrophe on the same scale.
It gave rise to the modern fire insurance industry. The scale of uninsured loss prompted the creation of the first fire insurance companies in the years that followed, along with private fire brigades, an early and influential model for commercial risk management.
It shows how disaster and suspicion feed each other. With no explanation available, Londoners blamed foreigners and Catholics, and an innocent man was hanged on a confession that could not have been true. The pattern of scapegoating after catastrophe has recurred throughout history.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
A fire that began in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane on September 2, 1666, burned for four days and destroyed most of the walled city of London, including St Paul's Cathedral. An innocent man was hanged for it. The London that rose afterward was built of brick and stone, and much of it still stands.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“A most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire.”
— Samuel Pepys, describing the Great Fire in his diary, September 1666
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the Great Fire of London, how it started and spread, the man wrongly hanged for it, and the rebuilding that followed?
