1915 Çanakkale Bridge

Can a king be angry at the sea? According to Herodotus, yes… In 480 BC, the Persian King Xerxes had a bridge of ships built across the Dardanelles to carry his army into Greece. But when a storm tore the bridge to pieces, the king, mad with rage, ordered the strait to be punished with three hundred lashes and fetters to be cast into its waters… What the sea made of this punishment we cannot know; but the strait’s current, it seems, paid it little mind.