Violet, Sunny and Klaus Baudelaire are very intelligent children. After their wealthy parents sudden and suspicious death in a fire that also burnt down their home the children are sent to live with count olaf. Soon enough they dicover that count olaf is planning to kill them and claim their inherited fourtune. The children outwit olaf's first plan to kill them and Olaf looses custody over them. They are then sent to live with Uncle Monty ,another distant relative, but count olaf refuses to give up and continues to try and execute his plans to get his hands on the childrens fortune. Thus reducing the Baudelaires lives to an ever recourring series of unfortunate events.
Hazax of Rodmore
Answer: A magnifying glass concentrates all the light that goes through it at its focal point, and it is this focal point that needs to be placed on the object which one wants to set on fire. The distance of the focal point to the lens depends on the magnifying glass characteristics, and it is more than likely that Count Olaf chose a glass where the focal point would be situated exactly "37 blocks" away from his house, that is, at the Baudelaire's mansion. When trying to set on fire an object much, much closer, the glass would concentrate much, much less energy, and would only be able to set on fire easily burnt objects, such as thin paper.
AnthonyA