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A landmark
The copper spire has long guided ships up the Elbe
St. Michael's, called the Michel, is one of Hamburg's five Lutheran main churches and one of the most important Protestant Baroque churches in northern Germany. Its 132-metre-high copper-covered Baroque spire has long served as a landfall mark for ships sailing up the river Elbe.
Lightning
Lightning burned the first church in 1750; the fire went unseen for two hours
The first church was destroyed on March 10, 1750, by a lightning strike, and the fire went unnoticed for about two hours. Rebuilding plans began the following day. The second church was inaugurated in 1762 with an oratorio by Georg Philipp Telemann, and the tower was completed in 1786.
A test
In 1802 an astronomer dropped metal balls from the tower to show the Earth turns
In 1802 the astronomer Johann Benzenberg attempted to confirm the Earth's rotation by dropping metal balls inside the church tower and measuring their eastward deviation from the vertical. The 76.3-metre drops gave an average eastward displacement of 8.7 millimetres, about fifty years before Foucault's pendulum.
Horses
Twelve parishioners saved it from being a stable for 500 horses
During the French occupation of Hamburg from 1806 to 1814, St. Michael's was not converted into a military stable like other main churches. Twelve parishioners provided space for the 500 horses assigned to it. Johannes Brahms was baptised in this church in 1833.
1906
A fire in the tower in 1906 took the life of its keeper
On July 3, 1906, a fire broke out in the tower during soldering work on damaged copper plates: tar gas produced during the work ignited the wooden cladding. The tower keeper Carl Beurle alerted the fire brigade by Morse signals, but could not save himself.
Day 2, morning
Next is Landungsbrücken.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article St. Michael's Church, Hamburg, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.