An Iriot original.

I was born with a special gift.

The ability to mentally transform any situation into the worst case scenario.

In my own brain.

My therapist calls my gift catastrophizing.

And that's why I'm uniquely qualified to scrutinize and analyze history's greatest disasters.

And find out who's to blame.

They say history repeats itself.

Not on my watch.

My name is Rebecca Delgado-Smith and I am the alarmist.

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into the alarmist.

A comedy podcast where we talk about history's greatest tragedies and figure out who's to blame.

Today we're discussing the 1776 Great Fire of New York.

Here's what you need to know.

We already know the story of how a band of colony patriots secretly dumped 342 chests of tea

into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Throughout the Revolutionary War, colonial resistance took many forms.

And while Bostonians turned to tea.

It was New Yorkers who turned up the heat with the Great Fire of 1776.

After British troops seized Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War,

the Continental Army was formed with George Washington as its commander in chief.

British General William Howe and his fleet of 34,000 troops

...