The Old Timers – How did they do it?
Posted by kevriley on December 31, 2009
A mystery was solved, a rather intriguing one if you ask me. These type of mysteries always make me wonder. How did the people of that time accomplish some of the things they were able to do?
The Country: Canada.
The Place: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
The Building: St. John’s Anglican Church
The church was built in 1754. As you can imagine, the architecture of the church was absolutely beautiful. With the type of wood working that is usually found in very old buildings. The church is the oldest Anglican church in Canada. A lot of love went into this building. Unfortunately, an arson decided to burn down the church on halloween 2001. No one has been caught. A lot of history was destroyed.
But the members of St. John’s decided to do something pretty remarkable. They decided to rebuild the church. Not just rebuild a new church. No, they decided to rebuild the church, as it was before the fire, using what was left of the building after the fire, and existing wood that was salvageable. A costly task, estimated at 7 million Canadian dollars. They managed it of course.
Using photographs, and excellent carpenters, they managed it. But one task, given to a woman, brought out a mystery.
It had to do with stars that were painted on the ceiling over the alter. The problem was that there were not a complete set of photographs for the woman to recreate the pattern of stars. As she debated the problem, she followed a hunch. She had a feeling that the star groupings were not something just randomly painted. So, she contacted an astronomer. He examined the photos that were available and found the constellation Perseus. The problem was, the location of the constellation was wrong for the night sky in Lunenburg.
Acting on his own hunch, he used a computer program to show what the sky would have looked like on Christmas Eve, year 0, the celebrated birth of Jesus. You guessed it, the stars matched. The painted stars recreated the night sky of December 24th, year 0, in Lunenburg.
So how did someone in the 1800’s, when the stars were painted on the ceiling, recreate the night sky from that date? What a feat! I find it amazing.
Here are pictures of the church before the fire:
Here is a picture of the church after it burned, which gives you an idea of what they had to work with to reconstruct the church:
Here is a video of the star mystery:
Some of the information in the video is incorrect. Such as the fact that the bible does not indicate that Jesus was born on December 25th, but it’s still interesting.
If you want more interesting facts on this historical landmark, go here.
Enjoy!
~ Kev
