The Statue Of Liberty went almost completely dark just before 11 p.m. Tuesday night. Only her torch and crown were still shining against the night sky. But while Lady Liberty went dark, Twitter lit up like the proverbial candle.

Many people assumed that Lady Liberty had joined various causes, including the Day Without A Woman strike which is happening today, which some users have hash-tagged adaywithoutwomen. Others theorized that France had finally asked for the statue back, saying U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand the symbolism of the monument.

Yet more Twitter users believed the outage was in protest against Trump’s latest draft if the immigration ban, which now denies entry to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries. Naturally others blamed Russian hackers. In fact Twitter was a hilarious treasure trove of theories from male and female users alike. A few gems are included a little further down this page.

Sorry, folks, it was an “unplanned outage”

When the lights finally came back on again at around midnight, the National Park Service said in a statement that their crews still have to inspect the scene to find the actual cause. However, they do suspect the perfectly-timed outage could be related to work they are doing on a new emergency backup generator for Lady’s Liberty’s home, Liberty Island.

Jerry Willis, public affairs officer for the National Parks Service, told the Washington Post they were replacing a generator damaged in Hurricane Sandy back in 2012 and were prepared for a lighting outage, but later in the week, not on Tuesday. Willis believes a setting on the timer had somehow changed, bringing forward the outage.

The Statue of Liberty wasn’t protesting

As reported by USA Today, Willis stressed that the outage was not related in any way to the “Day Without a Woman” protest.

In fact, he said they would never use the lighting system on Liberty Island to back any cause. However, Lady Liberty was used by others for a cause recently, as reported by Blasting News.

Almost two weeks ago, #AltLadyLiberty activists hung a “Refugees Welcome” banner on Lady Liberty’s skirts. While the National Parks Service did eventually remove the banner, it hung proud on the Statue of Liberty for around three hours.

And so, while the outage was not, in any way, planned, maybe it was Karma. The timing being so perfect, and all.
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