Episode Description
In 1184, hundreds of nobles gathered in the city of Erfurt, Germany, for what should have been an ordinary political meeting.
Instead, they fell through the floor.
The gathering was being held on the upper level of a medieval building above a latrine pit. When the wooden floor collapsed beneath the weight of the assembled nobles, dozens of men plunged into the waste-filled pit below.
Many were crushed beneath the others. Others drowned in the sewage.
What began as a political gathering became one of the strangest and most horrific disasters of the Middle Ages.
In this episode of The Eclectic, we explore the Erfurt Latrine Disaster — what happened, why so many nobles were gathered in one place, and how a seemingly ordinary meeting became a catastrophe remembered more than 800 years later.
Because sometimes, history doesn't just turn dark...
It gets very, very unpleasant.
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