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Masuma
06-03-2010, 01:45 PM
I once read this small passage in my physics’ book when I was doing my O-levels and this passage amused me a lot.

It is in Explaining Physic by Stephen Pople, Section 6, “Electrical Energy”



They say that lightning never strikes the same spot twice, but some unfortunate people have discovered otherwise:


In 1918, a Major Summerford was wounded in Flanders, not by the enemy, but by a flash of lightning which knocked him off his horse and left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was invalided out of the army, retired to Vancouver and took up fishing.
In 1924, he was by a river with three fellow anglers when lightning hit the tree beneath which he was sitting and paralyzed his right side. Within two years, he has more or less recovered from these shocks and was able to take walks in the Vancouver Park, where, in the summer of 1930, during a sudden thunderstorm he was again struck by lightning. This time he was permanently paralyzed and died two years later. Even then he had not been finished his career as an involuntary lightning conductor.
In June 1934 there was a storm over Vancouver. Lightning struck the cemetery and shattered a tombstone. It was Major Summerford’s. (I still don’t believe this! I mean…it’s like, Funnnnnny , :D though its bad of me to laugh at the poor person :()

Major Summerford’s case is not unique. Ex-ranger Mr. Roy C Sullivan of Virginia earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the only man to have survived seven attacks by lightning.
In 1942, lightning destroyed his big toe nail; in 1969 it took away his eyebrows. A year later, it seared his left shoulder, and three years after that it set his hair on fire. At this point, Mr. Sullivan decided to carry a five gallon can of water around with him in his car as a precaution. But it didn’t help much-in 1973 his (newly grown) hair caught fire again during a lightning strike. And in 1977, he was taken to hospital with chest and stomach burns after being struck while fishing.
Now the question is that is there some name for such happenings? I know they are not common but some people seem to have such encounters. Some people try their best to avoid a particular thing but that thing, for un-explainable reasons, happens ONLY to them. Are they somewhat prone to it? :D
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