The Great Stockholm Fire of 1759 is the city’s greatest fire since 1686.

It rages in the Eastern Södermalm on Thursday July 19 and over the following night, reduces about twenty blocks with about three hundred houses to ash, and renders about two thousand persons homeless.

While no deaths are reported, there are nineteen injuries.

In Sweden, the fire is named Mariabranden (Swedish brand = fire) after the Maria Magdalena Church, which is severely damaged.

Outside Sweden, the fire is most famous because an occult anecdote claims the scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg by a sort of clairvoyance could ”see” the fire from Gothenburg.