Carnival tragedy of 1823
Human crush in Valletta, British Malta

On 11 February 1823, around 110 boys were killed in a human crush at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta, Malta. The boys, who had gone to the convent to receive bread on the last day of carnival celebrations, were crushed after falling down a flight of stairs while trying to exit the convent.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carnival tragedy of 1823” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.