Samuel Pepys, blogger

Today is a special and unusual anniversary day.

Initially awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning by his maid, Samuel Pepys looked out his window and concluded, that what would later be known as the Great Fire of London, was far enough away from his house. Besides, he came home late that after making "mighty merry" that night. He decided to go back to sleep. When he woke up in the morning, reality hit him in the face after he looked out the window again and realized the material damage and human desperation surrounding him.

From Samuel Pepys's diary entry, September 2, 1666:

Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the River or bringing them into lighters that lay off. Poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons I perceive were loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. -- Today In Literature

Read more about Samuel Pepys' Great Fire of london diary entries here, and his observations during happier times five years earlier here.

[Via Today In Literature.]