A FREAKAGE FIREBALL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4309, 26 August 1921, Page 4

A FREAKAGE FIREBALL.

A remarkable instance pf the freakish behaviour of globe lightning occurred recently at Edmonton, a suburb of London, where a blinding flash, that was described as a thunderbolt, did a great deal of damage, and at the same time restored hearing to two deaf boys. There is, of course, says the “ Children’s Newspaper,” no such thing as .a thunderbolt. The : strange electric . phenomenon that I goes by that name is really a terious form of lightning like a ball, or globe, of fire. .No one can say what it will do, and men of science know very little about it as yet. In the course of a storm of hail at Edmonton, during which the sun shone in one. part of the sky while the other part was almost as black as night, there was a blinding flash of lightning and a de.aftening crash which sounded like the bursting of a bomb in an air raid. Two houses were struck, and a tall poplar tree was split. The lightning behaved very curiously. It caught part of a fenci and threw it into a garden three doors off; it struck a chimney-stack and set it hurtling on the roofs ; it tore out a small room and twisted a raiw pipe. But, most amusing of all, it Entered two houses iiTeach of which a deaf boy was seated, and, striking the youths on ,the-side of the head, did them no damage but restored their hearing. Then it seems to have entered a potting shed where a man was trimming plants, ran along his knife, and threw his on iliQ ground. Observers of the appearance describe it as a ball, of fire witft violet rays. Curiously enough, on the previous day the travellers on a Cunard liner in the Atlantic Ocean saw' a similar manifestation of globe lightning, which, fell, into the sea and sent up a cloud of steam. There is no accounting for the freaks of ball lightning. It may do great harm or, as in the case of Edmonton, some good. In 1901, at Uralsk, in Russia, globe lightning entered a house where J 2l people were gathered and made -them all deaf with, the exception of one girl, who lost her life. This was in marked contrast to .the Edmonton case. Sometimes the’ball travels Jor long passing in and out of buildings, tearing the clothes* of- people, but doing them no harm; and, curiously enough, animals seem to suffer injury from ball lightning far more frequently than human beings.