FREAKS OF LIGHTNING

Evening Star, Issue 18716, 19 August 1924, Page 7

FREAKS OF LIGHTNING

Argo found it related somewhere that lightning, which fell one day into the shop of a Suahian cobbler, respected the person of the artisaip himself, _ but had the singular effect of magnetising all his tools. Tho fantastic hook in which tho learned secretary of the Academy found this account represents the cobbler in great dismay. His hummer, iris pincers, his awl, attracted all tho nails and needles of the establishment, and caused them to adhere firmly to the tools. Tho poor fellow thought everything in Iris shop had been bedevilled, or that ho was dreaming. Tho basis of this history (says the Newcastle ‘ Chronicle ’) may; be considered as perfectly' authentic, for the 1 Philosophical Transactions ’ relates a fact of a similar nature, observed some time before we were made aware that iron can be rendered magnetic by tho electric current, and at a period when it could not, therefore, have been imagined that tho electricity of tho clouds could act upon iron froin a groat distance, and modify some of its essential properties without appearing to touch lt- fn June, 1781, a merchant of AVakefield had placed in a. corner of his room a box of knives and forks and other small iron tools destined to be sent to the colonies. Attracted by the metal, ihe lightning which struck the house broke open the box and spread its contents upon the, floor. _ AVhen tlm different objects were picked up_ it was noticed that they had acquired new properties. They' had all been affected by tho discharge, those, which remained intact as well as those which had been partially melted, for they had till become Amro or less magnetic; not a single nail in tho box hut what might have served tho purpose of a mariner’s compass.