Personal Injury from a Fire-ball

Abstract

IN compliance with a wish expressed by several scientific friends, I place on record an instance of damage done by a fire-ball or globular lightning. About five weeks ago, when I was in Londonderry, the circumstances were related to me by Mr. James Harvey, of Northland Road in that city. Mr. Harvey was staying during the month of August at Culdaff, on the north coast of Donegal; and on the 24th of that month, at about 4 p.m., a little boy named Robert Alcorn, whose parents occupied a house near Mr. Harvey's, was desired by his father to go into the yard and drive away some fowls from the door. On going out of the house, the boy saw a large bright object in the sky about the size of the table in his bedroom (I give his own account, leaving out necessary considerations of distances, &c.), or apparently about six square feet in area. The object came towards his house from the west, or north-west; and when it came close, it partly burst with a report like that of a gun. He put his hands over his face to shield himself from “the spark,” and after the explosion the bulk of the ball appeared to continue its course towards the east, low down. When it burst, however, it struck him, shattering the thumb and the first and second fingers of the left hand, cutting, scratching, and blackening the right hand and left cheek, and shattering into fragments several bone buttons on his coat. Very soon afterwards, Dr. R. Young, of Culdaff, and Dr. Newell, of Moville, attended the boy, and amputated the fingers and a portion of the thumb.