Abstract
ON June 21, about 6 p.m., Dr. Wallis, Mr. Taylor and myself were in our drawing-room on the ground floor, taking shelter from a passing storm; they were seated, and I stood five paces from them. The doors were all closed against the storm, and I went out and, for cool air, opened one. On returning, I saw a globular light, about the size of the full moon, in the air between Wallis and Taylor, and almost instantly I heard in the room a terrific clap of thunder like a cannon. I suffered afterwards from acute pain down the left side of my face. Taylor, who had an iron-headed golf stick in his hand, felt a twinge up his right arm, and a sensation as of singeing in his hair. Wallis felt nothing at all. We all experienced a sulphurous smell. In the adjoining room, leaning against one corner, were two Martini-Henry rifles in leather cases. One was untouched. The stock of the other was almost shattered, splinters lying about the room. The leather covering of the splintered rifle was torn, but the metal part of the rifle quite unhurt. At the point of the wall where the muzzle of the shattered rifle touched the wall, there was a hole 5 × 2½ and 1½ to 2 inches deep. The wall is of mud and plaster. In the room above were two holes in one wall; that is, the wall above that in which the hole appeared below. These holes were smaller than the one below. Just below the two holes stood a wooden case, iron-bound, and at its foot the matting was torn up, but the floor and the case were untouched. In the second room above, that is, the room over that in which I had seen the globular lightning, the wall near the ceiling was cracked for six or eight feet. This was all the damage done that we could find.
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RYAN, G. Globular Lightning. Nature 52, 392 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/052392a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/052392a0
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