This thread invites you to share your favourite comical historical event. Note that the intent is that these should be relatively light-hearted historical events (conceding that they likely weren't always comical or light-hearted for the people involved) rather than snarky commentary on present events. So "isn't it funny how the Austrian army defeated itself at the [possibly apocryphal] Battle of Karánsebes" is in the spirit of the thread; "isn't it funny how the Russian army seems to have miscalculated logistics for its advance on Kiev" is not.
To get you started, and to give you a pointer on the type of historical event we're looking for, I give you the Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
In July 1184, Henry VI, King of Germany (later Holy Roman Emperor), held court at a Hoftag in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. On the morning of 26 July, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse and most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement. This event is called Erfurter Latrinensturz (lit. 'Erfurt latrine fall') in several German sources.
A feud between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz which had existed since the defeat of Henry the Lion intensified to the point that King Henry VI was forced to intervene while he was traveling through the region during a military campaign against Poland. Henry decided to call a diet in Erfurt, where he was staying, to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.
Nobles across the Holy Roman Empire were invited to the meeting, and many arrived on 25 July to attend. Just as the assembly began, the wooden floor of the deanery, in which the nobles were sitting, broke under the stress, and people fell down through the first floor into the latrine in the cellar. About 60 people died, including Count Gozmar III of Ziegenhain, Count Friedrich I of Abenberg, Burgrave Friedrich I of Kirchberg, Count Heinrich I of Schwarzburg, Burgrave Burchard of Wartburg and Beringer of Meldingen. King Henry was said to have survived only because he sat in an alcove with a stone floor.
