2nd Great Fire

78 years ago today (December 29-30, 1940) 136 German bombers dropped over 100,000 bombs on London which caused 1,500 fires around the city and has been called the Second Great Fire of London. 160 people were killed including 12 firefighters. 250 people were wounded and hundreds of buildings were destroyed along with an estimated 5 million books. The picture below is of St Paul's Cathedral during this bombing raid. Despite 28 incendiary bombs falling in and around the Cathedral it survived. While the British didn't let the Blitz demoralize them as the Germans had hoped the economic damage from such large devastation of a major city is thought to have accelerated the collapse of the British Empire, and the decline of Great Britain as a superpower in the decades following the war.