Edward Leedskalnin (Latvian: Edvards Liedskalniņš) (August 10, 1887, Riga – December 7, 1951, Miami) was an eccentric Latvian emigrant to the United States and amateur sculptor who, it is alleged, single-handedly built the monument known as Coral Castle in Florida. He was also known for his unusual theories on magnetism.
Edward Leedskalnin was born August 10, 1887 (per WWI draft registration) in Riga, Latvia. Little is known of his childhood, aside from the fact that he was not wealthy and achieved only a fourth-grade education.[1] At the age of 26, he was engaged to marry Agnes Scuffs, a girl ten years younger.[2] However, the girl that Leedskalnin referred to as his “Sweet Sixteen” broke the engagement the night before their wedding, on account of his age. Several years later, he imigrated to the United States, where he found work in lumber camps in Canada, California, and Texas.
After contracting a case of tuberculosis, Leedskalnin moved to the warmer climate of Florida around 1919, where he purchased a small piece of land in Florida City. Over the next 20 years, Leedskalnin putatively constructed and lived within a massive coral monument he called “Rock Gate Park”, dedicated to the girl who had left him years before. Working alone at night, Leedskalnin, who weighed less than 100 lb (45 kg), eventually quarried and sculpted over 1,100 tons[vague] of coral into a monument that would later be known as the Coral Castle. Leedskalnin gave polite, but cryptic answers to visitors’ questions regarding his construction methods, which to this day remain a mystery. In spite of his private nature, he eventually opened his monument to the public, offering tours for 10 cents. He was a surprisingly accommodating host, even cooking hot dogs for visiting children in a pressure-cooker of his own invention.
This building was originally located in Florida City in the 1920s; then in the mid 1930s Leedskalnin moved it single-handedly to its present location on a ten-acre site near Homestead, Florida. In December 1951, he left a note on his front gate which read “Going to the Hospital”, and rode a bus to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. He died three days later of malnutrition and kidney failure, at the age of 64.
Writings
Magnetism
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Leedskalnin’s other four pamphlets addressed his theories on magnetism, detailing his theories on the interaction of electricity, magnetism and the body; Leedskalnin also included a number of simple experiments to validate his theories. Leedskalnin describes electrons and positrons as “north and south pole magnets”.
An intriguing feature of three of these pamphlets is a diagram labeled “Perpetual Motion Holder”. This diagram shows how electricity can be stored in a magnetic loop made from a permament horseshoe magnet and a “bridge” of soft iron across the horseshoe ends, forming a circle (loop) of magnetic metals. Energy is introduced into the loop through windings of electric wire around the soft iron (forming an electromagnet). When an electric pulse is sent into the wire windings, it will circulate in the magnetic loop until the soft iron bridge is physically removed from the horseshoe magnet ends, at which time the stored electric pulse is released into the wire windings as available energy. According to Leedskalnin, this stored energy can be kept circulating in the magnet for weeks or months, without appreciable loss.
Moral education
His first and longest booklet, a treatise on moral education, is printed on only the left-hand pages, and begins with the following preface:
Reader, if for any reason you do not like the things I say in the little book, I left just as much space as I used, so you can write your own opinion opposite it and see if you can do better.
The Author
In the first section, Leedskalnin vents his anger at his “Sweet Sixteen”, arguing that girls should be kept pure, and that boys are primarily a soiling influence upon them. On page 4 of A book in every home, Leedskalnin writes:
Everything we do should be for some good purpose but as everybody knows there is nothing good that can come to a girl from a fresh boy. When a girl is sixteen or seventeen years old, she is as good as she ever will be, but when a boy is sixteen years old, he is then fresher than in all his stages of development. He is then not big enough to work but he is too big to be kept in a nursery and then to allow such a fresh thing to soil a girl—it could not work on my girl. Now I will tell you about soiling. Anything that is done, if it is done with the right party it is all right, but when it is done with the wrong party, it is soiling, and concerning those fresh boys with the girls, it is wrong every time.
The second section continues along the theme of moral education, with several aphorisms aimed at parents regarding the proper way to raise children. The last, “Political” section, reveals that the reclusive Leedskalnin had strong political views. He advocates voting for property-owners only (and in proportion to their holdings), and argues that “Anyone who is too weak to make his own living is not strong enough to vote.”
