12/17/2025
Erfurt is a beautiful city in Germany, the part that used to be communist. When I was in military intelligence, Erfurt was the enemy: it housed a s**tload of co**ie nuclear missiles that were pointed directly at my ass. But before it was communist, it had the dubious honor of being the home of the world's s**ttiest catastrophe, the Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
On July 26, 1184 CE, the German king Heinrich VI held a meeting with the aristocracy at the Petersburg Citadel. The assembled attendees gathered on the second floor, which wasn't designed to hold that many people. The floor collapsed, and they fell through. The combined weight of all those falling people collapsed the first floor as well, and they all fell into the latrine in the basement. At least sixty people drowned in s**t. Ew. Every architect worries about s**t like this.
Heinrich just happened to be perched on a windowsill when the floor collapsed, so he didn't fall into the muck, but was left screaming with his legs dangling over it. Townspeople rushed to rescue him with ladders, and he was fine. He later became the Holy Roman Emperor, and he lived to the ripe old age of 31.
