Beefeater guards who are referred to as “Yeoman Warders” (pronounced “yo-man war-dur”) in their official capacity, take care of the ravens which live at the Tower of London compound and have a specialized whistle sound similar to the Twitter notification noise being played over and over, with 1 high note and 1 low note recited over and over. It’s unclear how long the ravens have been present but the tradition goes back at least 400 years as Elizabethan adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh (pronounced “rah-lee”) wrote of these ravens when held at the Tower of London, stating that he hoped the ravens would not eat his corpse. British lore states that if the ravens were to ever leave the Tower of London, the tower itself would fall.

John Flamsteed used the Tower of London to carry out astronomy as the Astronomer Royal to King Charles II. Flamsteed chose the White Tower because of its stature as it was one of the tallest buildings in London, England during the era. Flamsteed set out to leverage the positions of the moon and Earth to calculate longitude as this held the key of accurate navigation at sea. Flamsteed detested the ravens as they would leave droppings on his telescope and equipment. When Flamsteed asked Charles II to remove the ravens, he refused and built Flamsteed a brand new observatory down the River Thames, at Greenwich, England.

In 1066, William the Conqueror and his Norman military invaded England defeating the English and killing the Anglo Saxon monarch King Harold II. William crowned himself in place of Harold II and instituted Norman rule with brutal authority. Within a few years of invading, William built the Tower of London. England was considered a backwater prior to Norman rule, an empire stuck in the Dark Ages despite the world moving forward. The White Tower utilized the most modern architectural practices and techniques available during the era, a formidable building during a period of timber frames and thatched roofs. The White Tower was more than a mere display of”