Destructive storms are not very frequent in any one place but most people are under the impression that they are. They are apt to remember bad weather and forget about the good. Losses of life and property and failures of plans and business enterprises are caused by storms or the wrong kind of weather and such things are impressed on their memories. When rain is needed, it may fail altogether or come in such quantities that fields and roads are washed out and there are floods in the rivers. A thunderstorm brings rain but sometimes hail comes with it, destroying crops and damaging property. People have tried to overcome these bad effects of the weather in many ways. Irrigation has long been practiced in regions with scanty rainfall. Air conditioning affords relief from excessive heat. In many other ways, some foolish and some dangerous, men have tried to influence the weather. An interesting case of this kind which appealed to the imagination of people in many countries started near the beginning of the present century. It was an international battle against hail. Its origin was in the vineyards of Italy. Hail had done great damage there year after year, and finally an Italian got the idea that he might destroy hailstorms by shooting into them when they were just beginning. In those years, cannon were used in battle. Loaded with big charges of gunpowder, these cannon hurled solid, heavy balls at enemy cities, forts, fleets, and troops. In time of peace, there were many of these old cannon around, serving no useful purpose, and the Italian had no trouble in getting one to try on hailstorms. But he was not permitted to use a cannon ball. It might have crashed into a neighbor’s house or killed somebody in the vineyards. So he loaded it with gunpowder and fired it at the storm cloud, hoping it would create a disturbance in the atmosphere and weaken the hailstorm. It is an amazing fact that the vineyard of this Italian was damaged far less by hail than those of any of his neighbors, and the next year others tried firing a cannon with similar success. They became expert at it and learned how to load a cannon so that it cast a big, whirling smoke ring into the thunderstorm cloud. The news spread to other countries and in two or three years there was a lot of hail shooting in different parts of the world. So they held an international hail-shooting congress where they exchanged ideas and narrated their experiences. By the time the second world congress on hail was held, a great deal of uncertainty had developed. It seemed that the first hail shooters had begun work at a time when it just happened that there was much less than the usual amount of hail. Also, there were explosions and people were hurt. One man was killed and another had an arm blown off. After a few years, all the hail shooting ceased.