Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.Various
History
Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
ON Sunday the 27th of June last it grew on a sudden as dark as a winter
evening: soon after, the lightning began to flash, and the thunder to
roar. The claps were near, and extremely loud; and the lightning was
more like darting flames of fire, than flames of enkindled vapour.
Happily no damage was done to the town of Looe, which lies very low;
but at Bucklawren, a village situated on the top of a hill, about two
miles from hence, a farm-house was shattered in a most surprising
manner. The house fronts the south. The windows of the hall and
parlour, and of the chambers over them, which are in the front of
the house, are sashed. The dairy window is the only one on the west
side of the house. The chimnies are on the north side; and at the
south-west corner there is a row of old elms on a line with the front,
the nearest of which is ten feet distant from the house. The lightning
seems to have had a direction from the south-west to the north-east.
It first struck the bevilled roof of the south-west corner, near the
eaves of the house; made a large breach, and tore up the floor of the
garret, near the place where it entered, and descended by the west
wall, in oblique lines, into the chamber over the parlour; but not
having sufficient vent that way, it darted in a line from S.W. to N.E.
against the north wall of the garret, where meeting with resistance, it
broke down the floor near the north wall many feet wide, and carrying
the ceiling of the parlour-chamber before it, ran down by the wall of
that room in direct lines. Where it descended on the west and north
walls it made large and deep furrows in the plaister, and even tore
out the stones and mortar. A large splinter was struck off from the
bed-post contiguous to the north wall, and the bed was set on fire.
The chimney-piece was broken into many parts; the window-frame was
moved out of the wall, every pane of glass was broken, the under
sash was torn in pieces, and a large piece of the chimney-board was
thrown out of the window against an opposite garden wall, about 20
feet from the house. As the lightning shot thro’ the window, it found
a small cavity between the wall and the slating with which the wall
is covered, where it burst off the slates as far as it continued in
a direct line downward, and threw them at a great distance from the
house. Notwithstanding this dreadful havock, the force of the lightning
was not spent; the window gave it not a sufficient discharge. From
the chamber over the parlour, it descended by the north wall to the
room under it, which is wainscotted, tore off the cornice the whole
breadth of the room, and some mouldings from the wainscot; broke the
glasses and Delft ware in the beauffet; shivered the shelves of a
bottle-room; and, ripping off a small stock-lock from the door, burst
it open, and made its way chiefly thro’ the window, the frame of which
was moved from the wall, and the glass shattered to pieces. Near the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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