Mouthfuls of molten lead, wild weather, and insanity: the occupational hazards of an early lighthouse keeper.
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. Sigmund Freud, letter to Ernest Jones (1933), as quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) by Robert Andrews, p. 779
Henry Hall, the 94-year-old lighthouse keeper, discovered that a spark, probably from a candle in the lantern, had flown up and ignited the top of the tower. As Hall looked up to throw a bucket of water on the blaze, a stream of molten lead from the roof poured down his face and throat.