The candle’s flame outgrew the house.

Occasionally I start talking myself into the notion that – hardships and all – pre-Industrial man was better off and more fulfilled. Then I think about how they lived in wooden houses and defeated the darkness and cold with candles, torches, and fireplaces, and I reconsider.

How much more common an occurrence were house fires five hundred years ago? Was the danger such that they were less common because teaching about fire safety was paramount? (These types of questions are how you lose an afternoon in a Google rabbit hole.)

You can google “the Great Fire of ____” (fill in the blank with your city) and usually pull something up. Assuming that you are not a believer in Tartarian Empire conspiracy, you might conclude that devastating fires were far more common in the not too distant past, precisely because if open fire and wooden structures. If you are a believer in the Tartarian Empire conspiracy, then you believe Great Fires were common in the 19th and 20th centuries because of a meticulous effort to erase our history. I suppose open flames and wooden buildings made that effort easier.