4.9 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ball lightning | 2/8 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:04:47.852283+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== The sloop Catherine and Mary === In December 1726, a number of British newspapers printed an extract of a letter from John Howell of the sloop Catherine and Mary:
As we were coming thro' the Gulf of Florida on 29th of August, a large ball of fire fell from the Element and split our mast in Ten Thousand Pieces, if it were possible; split our Main Beam, also Three Planks of the Side, Under Water, and Three of the Deck; killed one man, another had his Hand carried of [sic], and had it not been for the violent rains, our Sails would have been of a Blast of Fire.
=== HMS Montague === One particularly large example was reported "on the authority of Dr. Gregory" in 1749:
Admiral Chambers on board the HMS Montague, 4 November 1749, was taking an observation just before noon ... he observed a large ball of blue fire about three miles [5 km] distant from them. They immediately lowered their topsails, but it came up so fast upon them, that, before they could raise the main tack, they observed the ball rise almost perpendicularly, and not above forty or fifty yards [35 or 45 m] from the main chains when it went off with an explosion, as great as if a hundred cannons had been discharged at the same time, leaving behind it a strong sulfurous smell. By this explosion the main top-mast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel.
Five men were knocked down and one of them very bruised. Just before the explosion, the ball seemed to be the size of a large mill-stone.
=== Georg Richmann === A 1753 report recounts lethal ball lightning when professor Georg Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia, constructed a kite-flying apparatus similar to Benjamin Franklin's proposal a year earlier. Richmann was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences when he heard thunder and ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was under way, ball lightning appeared, travelled down the string, struck Richmann's forehead and killed him. The ball had left a red spot on Richmann's forehead, his shoes were blown open, and his clothing was singed. His engraver was knocked unconscious. The door-frame of the room was split and the door was torn from its hinges.
=== HMS Warren Hastings === An English journal reported that during an 1809 storm, three "balls of fire" appeared and "attacked" the British ship HMS Warren Hastings. The crew watched one ball descend, killing a man on deck and setting the main mast on fire. A crewman went out to retrieve the fallen body and was struck by a second ball, which knocked him back and left him with mild burns. A third man was killed by contact with the third ball. Crew members reported a persistent, sickening sulphur smell afterward.
=== Ebenezer Cobham Brewer === Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, in his 1864 US edition of A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, discusses "globular lightning". He describes it as slow-moving balls of fire or explosive gas that sometimes fall to the earth or run along the ground during a thunderstorm. He said that the balls sometimes split into smaller balls and may explode "like a cannon".
=== Wilfrid de Fonvielle === In his book Thunder and Lightning, translated into English in 1875, French science-writer Wilfrid de Fonvielle wrote that there had been about 150 reports of globular lightning:
Globular lightning seems to be particularly attracted to metals; thus it will seek the railings of balconies, or else water or gas pipes etc., It has no peculiar tint of its own but will appear of any colour as the case may be ... at Coethen in the Duchy of Anhalt it appeared green. M. Colon, Vice-President of the Geological Society of Paris, saw a ball of lightning descend slowly from the sky along the bark of a poplar tree; as soon as it touched the earth it bounced up again, and disappeared without exploding. On 10th of September 1845 a ball of lightning entered the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the valley of Correze. This ball rolled across without doing any harm to two women and a young man who were here; but on getting into an adjoining stable it exploded and killed a pig which happened to be shut up there, and which, knowing nothing about the wonders of thunder and lightning, dared to smell it in the most rude and unbecoming manner.
The motion of such balls is far from being very rapid – they have even been observed occasionally to pause in their course, but they are not the less destructive for all that. A ball of lightning which entered the church of Stralsund, on exploding, projected a number of balls which exploded in their turn like shells.
=== Tsar Nicholas II === Nicholas II, the final tsar of the Russian Empire, reported witnessing a fiery ball as a child attending church in the company of his grandfather Alexander II.