The Thames — How a Small, Dirty River Built the Biggest Empire on Earth

In the summer of 1858, London's river smelled so bad that Parliament soaked its curtains in chemicals and debated abandoning the building. That same filthy river is the only reason London exists at all. This is the complete history of the Thames — the small, unremarkable river that built the biggest empire on Earth. From the wall of ice that shoved it into its current course, to the Romans who found the one perfect spot to bridge it, to the frost fairs with an elephant walking on the frozen water, to the busiest port in human history — and then the dark years: cholera, the Great Stink, a river officially declared biologically dead, and the engineer whose sewers saved more lives than almost any structure of the 19th century. The Thames built London. Then it poisoned London. Then London brought it back from the dead.