This is the Thames, the river that flows through London.
Now, in the 19th century the Thames stank,
literally.
The flush toilet had been invented, but the sewerage system hadn't,
which meant that all that waste got flushed straight into the Thames.
Now, to make that worse, the Thames is tidal here,
so, it didn't always just get washed out to sea,
sometimes it came back.
Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that,
because salty water is heavier,
so, it kind of went over the...
Anyway, that doesn't matter,
what matters is that Joseph Bagel...
Joseph Bazalgette!
I keep saying "Bagelgette", Joseph Bazalgette--
a wonderful Victorian engineer with an enormous ridiculous mustache --
built the massive sewerage system,
that now flushes most of London's waste away,
Including right here, underneath the Embankment,
but that was built for a 19th century London
and stayed during the 20th.
And now, this is such a big city, such an enormous metropolis,
that there is not enough capacity,
so here is something you might not know:
the Thames to this day
still sometimes has raw sewage pumped into it.
After a strong rain storm, if it's been raining for days
and there's just too much crap for London to deal with,
the Thames gets it instead.
And that is something you might not know,
that the Thames still has a bit of 19th century stink in to it now and again.
[Closed captions by MM. Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]