Jack July

Ån Anecdote: The Terrific Storm of the 12th of July Last:

During the terrific storm of the 12^th of July last, a labourer’s cottage was struck by lightning at Leagrave, near here. The lightning descended, according to an eye-witness’s report, like a “spout of fire,” and struck and descended the chimney, which it destroyed. In the room below there was an old shepherd, an invalid woman, a child and a shepherd’s dog. The shepherd was sitting in a chair leaning on a stick, a kettle was boiling on the fire, and the door was open. The lightning entered the room simultaneously by the chimney and an adjoining window. The window was utterly destroyed, and the kettle was thrown from the fire across the room, the stick on which the shepherd was leaning was torn from his hand and also thrown across the room, the lightning entered a cupboard containing glass and crockery and destroyed every article, and plaster was torn from the walls. The man and woman remained unhurt, but the child was thrown down and its knees stiffened. The dog was struck perfectly stiff, “like a log of wood,” and was considered dead. The room seemed full of fire, water, and sulphur, and the occupants said the smell of sulphur was so strong that they would certainly have been suffocated had it not been for the open door. After the storm had abated, the dog, with all its limbs stiff, was laid in a barn, where it very slowly and partially recovered. It long remained both deaf and blind, and was entirely dependent upon smell for its recognition of persons and things.

-An 1889 account in Nature-