Skulls in the Stars

One of the fun things about reading early science journals and magazines is finding anecdotes about unusual phenomena that are sent in by readers and published. While I was writing my previous blog post about Tyndall and Mayer, I came across a letter in The Popular Science Monthly from 1879, simply titled, “Remarkable lightning stroke.” The letter, written by Robert F. Jackson, Jr. from Macon, Georgia, on May 20, 1879, is a fascinating lightning event, and I reproduce the letter in full below.

There recently occurred in our city a case of stroke by lightning which, no doubt, from its strange freaks, will be of interest to the readers of The Popular Science Monthly. It took place in a grocery store, and two persons were the sufferers. The bolt, after tearing up the eaves of the house, entered it on the side, leaving a smutty stain between the cracks. It bulged out the side of the shop for several feet, put out the lamp, knocked down many articles from the shelves, took off the tops of several lamp-chimneys resting on them, completely tore off the paper wrappers of many small cakes of soap, and finally emerged at the corner of the room, tearing off several planks. In the passage of the current from one division of the shelves to the other, it either split the dividing boards or passed under them, partially fusing the nails and charring the adjacent wood. But what makes the stroke most remarkable is the way in which it affected the two men who were struck. One of them, Ware, was stunned for a few moments, had his pipe knocked from his mouth several feet away, and was left with a red, sore scar across his cheek and a paralysis of his arms, which latter remained for about two hours. Still more strangely did it deal with the other man, Bullard, who was resting upon the show-case opposite Ware. The current passed up his arm, under the armpit, down the right side of the body to the thigh, leaped across to the inner side of the left leg, and passed down the leg to the foot. It made a red bunch and sore mark upon the body, singed the hair from both legs, and left the sufferer unconscious for more than twenty-four hours. Both have fully recovered, with the exception of a little soreness. In both cases we noted the spiral direction of the current. The house was low, in a depressed situation, and protected with a rod.

Lightning was an unending source of fascination for early pre-1900s researchers, and it seems that any story of a strange lightning strike could be published in the scientific journals. I have previously shared a story of an 1880 observation of ball lightning, and an article asking the curious question, “Are beech trees ever struck by lightning?” from 1889. This was not just a problem of scientific interest, of course, as lightning can kill, and famously killed one person researching it.

Lightning rods have mitigated much of the danger to buildings from lightning strikes, but still about 28 people die each year in the U.S. due to lightning, so it is still not to be taken lightly.