WICU, SICU and a stranded lighthouse

Morning: went to look around two of the intensive care units at the local hospital here in Baltimore. Even in such a well resourced and well appointed environment, they need to be alert to vulnerabilities in the system, as exemplified by the notice on the back of one door, reminding staff to take care not to confuse anticoagulant with antibiotic.

Walking back from the Armstrong Institute to my hotel, I passed a lighthouse on stilts. I couldn't really work out why it was there, since there didn't seem to be a particular threat to shipping so close into the harbour. Apparently, it was moved there some time ago from its original position about 5 miles away, where it actually was alerting ships to danger, to bring all of the quaint historical landmarks of Baltimore within easy walking distance of each other. I guess the alternative would have been to provide decent public transport links between all the monuments... and that is hardly an American approach to travel.

I don't think anyone has tried moving the shot tower, which I thought looked like the offspring of a chimney and a small castle, but was apparently once the tallest building in the US. Used simply to drop molten lead from a great height to create pistol shot and cannon balls.

Baltimore apparently got caught up in the Civil War (hence the need for lots of shot, presumably), and is the scene of the first massacre of the war, where soldiers alighting from a train were ambushed by people who sympathised with the southerners. There were two stations in Baltimore, one each side of the centre, because trains were considered too polluting and dirty to cross through the city centre, so everyone had to alight from the one train to take horse-drawn carriages to the other station to continue their journeys. This is what the soldiers should have done...

And my last of what Pete called "LKBBFs, Little Known But Boring Facts" and I consider to be "LKBFFs, Little Known But Fascinating Facts" for the evening: the cobblestones that pave many of Baltimore's streets  around the harbour area were delivered here as ships' ballast when this was a thriving port, so they originate from all corners of the globe.

Thank you to Pete and Mahiyar for a very entertaining and also highly informative evening!