The Washington times., 1937-06-26
The Human Side of the News
By Monitor
Blu Edwin C.. Hill

DR W. H HUMPHREYS, lightning expert Of the United
~ States Weather Bureau offers timely suggestions as to
safety precautions electrical storms When the cannonade
of the gods begins and Jove lets go his thunderbos keep
away open fields and that golf courses and
close proximity to steel-shafted clubs
If you caught out chuck the clubs and make for some
king sheerany kind of house better than the wide
open Or if you can't leg for house fast enough
lie down in dch-Iie down, don't stand up Safe places
otherwise with ametal roofs walls and floors
caves and bottom of railway cuts The most dangerous
company there when the ceectal fireworks start popping
is tree.
Years ago. at the demonstration laboratories of the General
Electric Company Schenectady New York, watched the
late Dr. Charles P Stenmez forge hunderbolts-
ghning-and send them sizzling and flashing
The lights dmmed. Came warning shout. Then
a binding flash followed by crash of thunder and
pungent smell of Ten million volts had been hurled
through that by And remember that the great
Dr. Senmez said aferward that the safest place to be is
modern seel-framed building, alsteel automobile
or a steel railroad
And it was Dr. Stenmetz who said also that if enjoys
the tremendous majesty of great electrical Storm there
danger in standing at window doorway than
if one sat back in the interior of the house
Camille Flammarion, the great French astronomer spent
years in collecting authenticated stories of the freaks OF
lightning.
In his records is the of drinking mug being by
flash lightning of the hands Of who drinking
from the mug without the slightest injury to the himself
whip snatched out of riders hand Two ladies' calmly
knitting have their knitting needles stolen by lightning bolt
girl sitting at her sewing machine pair of scissors in
her hand flash of lightning her scissors and she
finds herself sitting on the sewing machine.
farmland is carrying ptchfork his shoulders The
lightning sezes it, carries it off fifty yards and twists its
pongs into corkscrews The clothes stripped from the
farmer in the fields he is left naked and every nail in his
boots pucked Hands burned to the bone with
mark left gloves which the hands encased
is struck by lightning his underwear scorched but his
clothes untouched Men and women have been
by lightning and have escaped with their lives, al
though the hair of their heads rolled into hard twists
and buried in the flesh Of their scalps.
Lightning may kill without leaving the slightest mark 1t
may partial paralysis the loss of speech
sight to have curious antagonism to human hair
young girl 20 had her hair shaved off clean done
by razor yet she felt not the slightest shock and for some
minutes of her loss Lightning struck stable
killed of twenty Beginning with the COW
the door, it spared the second killed the third and SO
All the numbers killed. The numbers
W not even scOrched.
From man-made lightning and the smashing of the atom
may spring within the next quarter of century such COM
forts Injuries the scientists have scarcely dreamed
Of Locked up in the atom is almost unlimited power-the
power trains, light cities, fly airpanes
with engines bigger than chd toy and produce thou
sand marves incredible than the magic wrought by
Aladdin with his wonderful lamp
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