My good friend Eugene Byrne is an expert on local history in Bristol. Today he has done a blog post on interesting facts about Brunel’s fabulous Clifton Suspension Bridge. This is my favorite entry:

9. A lunatic named William Comyns Beaumont was walking across the Bridge in the 1920s and had a mystic revelation. Beaumont was a British Israelist, a product of the age of social Darwinism and “scientific” racism that couldn’t abide the idea that the events described in the Bible took place in the Middle East and were acted out by Jews and the ethnic forebears of Arabs. British Israelists believed that it had all taken place in Britain, actually. It was while on the Suspension Bridge that Beaumont’s geography all fell into place. Suddenly it all made perfect sense! Jesus had in fact been born in Glastonbury, he had lived most of his life in Somerset, London was Damascus, Edinburgh was Jersalem and Bristol? … Well Bristol was Sodom. So hurrah for us.

So, when are you coming to visit, Hal Duncan?

But here’s the clincher:

FACT: William Comyns Beaumont was a Daily Mail journalist.

Sadly they haven’t got any less crazy since the 1920s.