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Blow up Bridge, Regent's Park

The Regent's Canal passes through Regent's Park (well, there's a thing) and under Macclesfield Bridge, known as Blow Up Bridge after the fate of the barge Tilbury. Filled with petrol, gunpowder and tea, she was one of a train of six barges towed by a steam tug early one morning in 1874 when she blew up right under the bridge. The Tilbury was totally destroyed and her crew killed, another barge sunk, houses nearby were damaged and the noise heard all over London. Only the iron pillars of the bridge survived, which were subsequently re-erected the other way round, so that grooves worn by horse towlines now appear on the side away from the water. Awful though it was, this was one of the worst disasters to strike the waterways in the whole of their time as freight arteries, which makes a bit of a contrast with the death toll on the roads today.