A FREAKISH FIRE BALL

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 10 September 1921, Page 4

A FREAKISH FIRE BALL

CURIOUS OCCURRENCES

A remarkable instance of the f-eakish behaviour of globe lightning cci'tuied recently at Edmonton, a «ut»urb of London, where v blinding flash, that was described as v thunderbolt, did n great deal of damage and at the same time fostered 'hearing to two <Wf boys. There is, of course, says the ChiMrtm's Newspaper, no such thing as a tnumleibolt. The strange electric phenomenon that goes by that name is really a injslerious form of lightning, like a ball, or globe, of iire. No one can say whatit will do, and men. of .science knew very little about it as yet. ffi the, course of a storm of hail at JKdmonton, during which the sun shone in c no jmii of tlie sky while Ofc other part was almost a« black as night, tbere wns a blinding flash of lightning »uid a aoufening crash whwh sounded »ike the tunstin^ of a bomb in an air r<iid. Two houses were struck" and, a tall poplar tree was split. The lightning behaved very curiously. It caught raii of a fence and threw it into a garden thiee doors off; it struck a cniinn^v-&t.ai;k and set it hurtling on the rcyibj it tor© out a Bmalt room and twihi&l a drain pipe. But. most amusing of all, it entered two houses in each or which a doaf boy was seated, and, tanking i the youths on tiie side of the htud, did them no'damage, but restored their hearing. Then it seems to have entered I a potting shed where a man was trimming plants, ran along his knife, and threw him on the ground. Observers of the appearance describe it as a ball jof fire with violet rays. Curiously enougn, on the previous day the travellers, on aXunaTd liner in the Atlantic Ocean saw a similar manifestation o£ globe lightning, whiSlf fell into the sea and sent up a cloud of steam. There is no accounting for the freaks of bal lightning. It may do great harm or, i ns in the case of Edmonton, some good. In 1901. at Uralsk, in Russia, globe lightning entered a house where 21 people were gathered and made them all deaf, with the exception of one girl, I who lost her life. This was in marked contras£ to the Edmonton case. Some- . times t/ie ball travels for long distances passing in and out of buildings, tear- . ins the clothes of people but doing them , no harm; and, curiously enough, animals «eem lo suffer injury from bal! lightning , fur more frequently than human beings.