Many a time, too, has a fire, burning brightly in a grate, been suddenly extinguished by lightning; and the same thing has happened with pottery and tile-making furnaces. As a rule, it is extremely difficult to re-light candles or fires thus extinguished. In some instances it takes on itself to light the gas. On August 3, 1876, near the Observatory in Paris, Rue Leclerc, towards the corner of the Boulevard Saint Jacques, a gas jet was lit by lightning. The latter was twenty centimetres from a long gutter, and was in the gap, so to speak, of an electric circuit formed by it and the damp wall communicating with the ground. A violent explosion took place at the moment the gas caught alight, the gas meter, on the wall two metres above it, was dislodged, when a second explosion was heard. The thunderclap was truly terrific, and immediately followed the lightning flash. The chronometer in the meteorological bureau in the Observatory was stopped suddenly. The keeper of the square of the Luxembourg saw a ball of red fire explode with great violence, and scatter in all directions. The plate belonging to the Pères was, according to M. de Fonvielle, broken to a thousand pieces, and the outer part of an iron bar was volatilized. There were no deaths or injuries to record, although several people were thrown down by the shock. Sometimes great disasters are indirectly caused by lightning. Thus in July, 1903, it set fire to an old house at Muda, Paluzzo. Under other circumstances, the accident might have been insignificant. But, fanned by a violent wind, the flames increased, and, approaching nearer and nearer, burned a hundred houses, or in other words, the whole village. A similar catastrophe took place at the village of Ochres, in Dauphine, on August 27, 1900. Lightning set fire to twenty thatched cottages, which, out of thirty-two composing the village, were in ashes within less than an hour. Three persons were burnt alive, and four others seriously injured. On August 25, 1881, lightning struck the village of Saint Innocent, at three o'clock in the morning. Seven houses were totally burnt, and three women perished in the flames. A fire caused by lightning burst out on June 24, 1872, at Perrigny, near Pontailler (Côte d'Or). Seventeen houses were burnt, and seventy-eight people found themselves homeless. Sometimes these disasters attain terrifying proportions. During an awful thunderstorm, the electric spark set fire to eighteen parishes in Belgium; ruin spread over an area of 160 kilometres. But could anything be more dreadful than the fate of certain ships that have been struck by lightning? Here is the case of one which was literally cut in two.