historians blame weather for freak workplace accident

Which didn’t have anything to do with the weather.
Which wasn’t actually an accident.
Which shows that historians, too, can ignore any obvious evidence which gets in the way of a good story.

Scene: a certain workplace.
Time: a Monday morning.
Activity: while sneaking a smoke out the back, a certain employee spies a glass pane from a louvre window lying in the brick courtyard.
“How did that get there?” Hmmmmm.
Takes conundrum indoors and upstairs where the fine brains behind history teaching in Victoria apply themselves to the mystery.

Some time ensues. Finally: Eureka – the answer!!

Deftly ignoring the evidence of:
large painters’ ladders in the courtyard,
a fresh coat of paint on the window frame,
the fact that they had been dodging painters’ debris for three days over the previous week, and
the very fine weekend weather,
the collective agreement was that a freak, cyclonic gust of wind had swirled through the courtyard and travelled up the wall with such forceful violence as to not only dislodge the glass from its place in the window but then to suck it out of the building before laying it (gently) to rest on the bricks in the courtyard.

My, what clever fellows we are! There is no accounting for that weather! Dangerous stuff that.

Enter: logic and a staff member who clearly has a greater grip on reality.

“Guess what, guess what?”, we say. Proceed with explanation of freak wind episode and danger of flying glass in courtyard, should be paid danger money, etc, etc.

“Errr,” says she. “I think the painters did it.”

Oh. Quite right. Is that the phone?