This is a sad story with a silver lining. Cape Meares Lighthouse is an open-to-the-public inactive lighthouse on the cost of Oregon. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the risk of editorializing, some jerks vandalized the lighthouse in January of this year, riddling it with bullets. It may cost more than $500,000 to repair the lens, which was created in Paris in 1888, which is a real shame.

On the other hand, though, the bulletholes and broken glass do make the lighthouse look uncannily like the lighthouse in first-person shooter Half-Life 2.

Naturally we’re not keen on destruction – I prefer to add bulletholes to my subjects in post-production only. But without the vandalism-induced resemblance, we never would have heard of the lighthouse to begin with.