Oceans go acidic
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, an idealistic character explains,
“When, as a consequence of human improvement… the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particular kind of lemonade… It is positively a fact! Just imagine the city docks filled, every day, with a flood [...]

In fairness, they’re nuts who claim to be Christians
There’s a great moment in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown when Brown discovers the Christians in his New England village worshipping Satan. It’s a tale of obsession, clearly–men and women so panicked about evil that they kind of like it. I’m reminded of Hawthorne following every [...]