What was the first lighthouse?

0:00 Welcome to History's Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn. Today we have a very special episode because of some amazing listener questions!

0:11 Shout out to George, who is four, and his sister Carolina, who is two, from Mooley Point in Cape Town, South Africa.

0:19 They live right next to a beautiful red and white striped lighthouse and wondered who built the very first one.

0:25 And a big hello to Billy, who is five, and his sister Grace, who is eight, from Felixstow in Suffolk, who also asked who invented the lighthouse. This one is for you too, Billy and Grace.

0:38 If you haven't already, tap follow wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode.

0:43 Wait, so who did invent the first one?

0:46 Well, we have to travel back more than 2,000 years to the coast of Egypt, where a flaming tower taller than a 30-story building was about to become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A structure so legendary it changed the course of maritime history forever.

1:05 A flaming tower? Let's go!

1:08 But first, a mind-blowing fact. This incredible building cost 800 talents of silver. That is about 20 tonnes of pure silver. Enough to buy an entire fleet of warships, feed thousands of people for a lifetime, or build multiple palaces. It was a colossal fortune.

1:28 Okay, before this giant flaming tower, how did ships know where they were going at night? They didn't!

1:35 More than 2,000 years ago, sailors navigated by looking up at the stars. But on dark, cloudy, and stormy nights, they were sailing completely blind. That sounds super dangerous! What if they hit something? That's exactly what happened. Ships would crash into hidden rocks and sink just as they reached the shore.

1:57 It was a massive problem in the booming new city of Alexandria in Egypt. Whoa, when was this exactly? Around 290 BC. The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. He personally chose the location because of its deep waters, and it was quickly becoming the absolute busiest trading port in the entire Mediterranean Sea.

2:23 So there were tons of ships coming in and out every single day.

2:27 Exactly. Imagine a harbour crammed with hundreds of wooden ships, with massive square sails, loaded with grain to feed the ancient world, exotic spices, and incredible treasures. But the harbour had these treacherous shifting sandbars and deadly limestone reefs hiding just beneath the waves.

2:49 They needed a warning sign, like a giant stoplight for ships.

2:53 Bingo, the ruler of Egypt, King Ptolemy I, decided to build something no one had ever seen before. A massive warning light on a tiny island just off the coast. Wait, what was the island called? It was called Pharos, and the king hired a brilliant Greek architect and engineer named Sostratus of Nidus to build it.

3:16 Sostratus had to figure out how to build something taller than anyone had ever attempted on a tiny windswept island.

3:25 That sounds like a massive construction job. How many workers did it take?

3:30 Thousands of stonemasons, labourers, and engineers worked on it. And to connect the island to the mainland city of Alexandria, they built a massive artificial land bridge called the Hepta Stadion, which was almost a mile long. It turned the island into a peninsula.

3:48 So how big was this first lighthouse when they finally finished it?

3:52 Hold on to your hat, Finn. It took 12 years to build, and when it was finished, around 280 BC, it was between 330 and 360 feet tall. What? That's as tall as a modern skyscraper! Yep, it was the second tallest man-made structure in the entire world, right behind the Great Pyramid of Giza. You could fit about 20 giraffes standing on top of each other inside it.

4:22unknown Ha ha ha!

4:23 I would love to see that. But what did it look like? Was it just a big stone tube?

4:29 It wasn't just a boring cylinder. The architect used a genius design with three unique stacked sections. The bottom was a massive square fortress built with gigantic solid blocks of limestone and pink granite. Those blocks were held together with melted lead to survive the pounding, crashing ocean waves.

4:51 Okay, a tough square bottom sealed with metal. What came next?

4:56 Sitting on top of that square base was the middle section, which was an octagon, meaning it had eight sides. And sitting on top of the octagon was the very top section, a tall, slender cylinder where the real magic happened. The fire! How did they make the light? At the very top, open to the wind, they built a massive furnace.

5:18 Every single night, workers had to carry heavy bundles of fuel all the way up a twisting spiral ramp to keep a giant bonfire blazing.

5:29 Wait, what kind of fuel did they use if regular wood was so expensive in Egypt?

5:34 That is a historical mystery. Since wood was scarce, they likely burned palm wood, papyrus roots, or naphtha. The ramp was so wide that they used donkeys and horses to haul the fuel all the way to the top.

5:50 Imagine a donkey walking up a 300-foot tower. But wait, how could ships see the fire from far away?

5:58 That is the most brilliant part! The architect, Sostratus, installed a gigantic, highly polished bronze mirror right behind the fire. A giant mirror? Like a huge reflector. Exactly! Sostratus used a massive, slightly curved sheet of highly polished bronze. At night, the bronze mirror caught the light of the blazing fire and beamed it out to sea like a modern searchlight.

6:25 And during the day, it caught the bright, burning Egyptian sun and reflected it outward. That is genius! How far away could they see it? The light was so powerful, sailors could see it from almost 30 miles away. That's like standing in one city and seeing a flashlight in another city. And at the absolute highest point of the roof, standing directly over the fire, was a massive statue of Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, holding a lightning bolt to watch over the sailors.

6:57 That is so epic. Did it actually keep the ship safe? Did the crashes stop?

7:03 It was a total game changer. Suddenly, ships could navigate those tricky limestone reefs and sail safely into the great harbour of Alexandria, day or night, no matter how bad the weather was. It saved countless lives and helped make Alexandria one of the richest, most educated, and wealthiest cities in the entire ancient world.

7:26 So, is it still there today? Can we go see it? Sadly, no, but its endurance is mind-boggling. It stood strong for an unbelievable 1,500 years. It survived the rise and fall of empires, massive storms, and endless wars. But nature finally won the battle. What happened? Did an army knock it down? Worse, the Mediterranean coast is prone to earthquakes.

7:56 Between the year 956 and 1323 AD, three incredibly powerful earthquakes rocked the region. The ground shook with such terrifying force that the massive stone blocks, even the ones sealed with lead, finally cracked. The mighty tower that had guided ships for 15 centuries collapsed into ruins.

8:19 Oh man, that is so sad. All that hard work washed away into the sea.

8:24 But its legacy changed the world! Because of the lighthouse of Alexandria, people realised they could use towers and light to save lives. It inspired every single lighthouse built after it.

8:37 Even the red and white one George and Carolina live by in Cape Town. Exactly!

8:42 In fact, the ancient lighthouse was so famous that the island it stood on, pharos, became the actual word for lighthouse in many languages.

8:52 Wait, really? Like what languages?

8:55 In French, lighthouse is phare. In Spanish and Italian, it is far. Even in Greek, it is pharos. The island literally gave lighthouses their name.

9:05 Okay, that is a seriously cool fun fact.

9:09 And here is another wow moment. For centuries, people thought the lighthouse was completely gone forever. Just a myth. But in 1994, a team of French underwater archaeologists went scuba diving in the eastern harbour of Alexandria. Guess what they found? No way! Did they find the giant bronze mirror? Not the mirror, but they found thousands of massive stone blocks, giant statues of ancient kings and queens that stood near the base, and huge granite columns lying right there on the ocean floor.

9:43 The actual ruins of the lighthouse are still resting under the sea, creating a magical underwater museum.

9:50 That gives me goosebumps. It is like a sunken treasure of history. Alright, Then, time for the quiz! Are you ready? Okay, I'm ready.

10:00 First question. What was the name of the island where the first lighthouse was built? Next one. How many years did it take to build the lighthouse of Alexandria? Question 3. What animal was used to carry fuel up the tower's ramps? Here's number four. What natural disaster destroyed the lighthouse after 1500 years?

10:36 Last question. What modern languages use a version of the word Pharos for lighthouse? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is it was built on the island of Pharos. For question two, it took twelve years to build the massive tower. three, the answer is donkeys and horses were used to haul the fuel.

11:06 Question four, it was destroyed by a series of massive earthquakes. And the final answer is French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek, to name a few.

11:17 I can't stop thinking about a donkey walking up a 300-foot tower next to a giant bronze mirror.

11:25 It really proves that ancient people were brilliant engineers. They use fire and mirrors to save thousands of lives.

11:33 If you love learning about the first lighthouse, please leave us a five-star review. Just scroll down and tap the stars.

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12:01 See you next time on History's Not Boring.