Thread by @ElonBachman

1\ This is the weirdest thread about a lighthouse you will ever read

12 miles off the English coast are the dangerous Eddystone Rocks, which so terrified mariners that they preferred to risk shipwreck by hugging the French coast

2\ The first person to attempt a lighthouse on the Rocks was Henry Winstanley in 1969. But England was at war with France, and a French privateer took Henry prisoner and destroyed the works

Louis XIV set Henry free, saying "France is at war with England, not with humanity"

3\ Henry finished the wooden lighthouse but had the bad judgment to be making additions to it with five other men when the Great Storm of 1703 hit. He and his men were never seen again

The Great Storm killed over 1,000 seaman and toppled many more chimneys

4\ Next up was Captain John Lovett, who undertook to build a replacement lighthouse

Echoing the plot of the Three Little Pigs, Lovett abandoned the earlier all-wood design for one incorporating brick

5\ One of the light keepers was a 94 year old named Henry Hall (probably out there hiding from Coronavirus)

And here's where the story gets WEIRD

In 1755 the structure caught fire, and Hall somehow, um, ingested molten lead

Obviously we need to detour to explore Hall's story

6\ While the 94 year old was throwing buckets of water at the structure fire, he had the misfortune to look up with his mouth open at the exact moment that a torrent of molten lead fell from the roof

It went down his throat!

7\ The lighthouse burned down, but a passing boat saw Hall and his men on the rocks. They dragged 94 year old Hall through the surf with a rope

8\ Back ashore, Hall's story was discounted by doctors as the rantings of an old man. But when he died shortly thereafter, the autopsy found congealed lead in his stomach

The ingot now lives at the National Museum of Scotland

9\ But because this was Enlightenment Era England, our story doesn't end there

To prove that you could live after drinking molten lead, The Royalty Society undertook a series of experiments wherein they force fed molten lead to animals, killing them

10\ A series of other lighthouses followed on Eddystone Rocks

But so profitable was the private lighthouse industry that in 1834 Parliament nationalized it

Economics students ever since have, bizarrely, been taught that governments must build lighthouses because markets won't

11\ In 1982 the current lighthouse on Eddystone Rocks was automated, which seems a good end for our story

12\12 You can read a delightful short history of the early UK lighthouse industry here:

static.stevereads.com/papers_to_read…