The wonders of nature are endless! One of them is lightning. A fiery arrow that fell from heaven can turn a person into ashes, or, having killed, leave the corpse "as if alive." But sometimes lightning acts as a photographer, capturing various images on the victim's body.
Black cat on the forehead
British monthly British Journal of Photography told about an amazing case that happened in Michigan (USA) in 1887. Farmer Amos Briggs, who lived near Jonesville, went out into the street before the storm to disperse the fighting cats. Briggs was already approaching the woodpile, where a fight broke out when lightning struck from heaven. She scattered wood and killed the cats. Recovering from his fright, Amos realized that he got off easily. The lightning only stopped his watch and tore the left pant leg from top to bottom. The boot on the left foot was left without a sole.
When Briggs returned to the house, his wife cried out in horror:
- The devil marked you!
Lichtenberg figures - * lightning flowers *.
Taking the mirror she held out, Briggs saw a black feline silhouette on his forehead. Taking a closer look, in the "picture" one could distinguish mustache, fur, bared teeth. Amos washed his face with soap, rubbed his forehead with rags dipped in kerosene and vinegar, but nothing helped. Fortunately, the next morning the drawing turned pale and disappeared completely after a few days.
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The farmer is in luck. Around the same time, a lightning strike left on the skin of an Italian woman from Lugano the imprint of a flower standing on her window. The woman hoped that the drawing would disappear, but year after year it remained unchanged.
The French astronomer Camille Flammarion called the drawings left by lightning keranography (from the Greek “keranos” - “lightning” and “graphos” - “to write”). His colleague André Poei, director of the observatory in Havana, studied several dozen cases of ceranography. He complained that in cases of death from lightning, the drawing disappears in a matter of hours. It never occurs to anyone to capture an image in time.
On July 19, 1892, lightning killed two blacks in Highland Park, Pennsylvania, USA. Black skin did not prevent the appearance of a pattern on the chest of one of the victims. There “was captured an absolutely accurate photograph of a corner of nature, where lightning overtook this man. The leaves of the tree and the fern are depicted so clearly that the smallest veins were revealed to the eye. After about four hours, the “photo” began to blur and turned into a purple spot.
Photos of metal
Often, the discharge imprints only objects that conduct electricity on the victim's body, and ignores everything else. In September 1825, lightning struck the ship Il Buono Servo, anchored in the Adriatic Sea. At this moment the sailor Antonio Teodoro was sitting under the foremast mending his shirt. Lightning killed him outright. After examining the body, the ship's doctor saw no wounds or marks, apart from a clear representation of a horseshoe on the thigh. The horseshoe itself, nailed to the foremast “for good luck,” remained in place after a lightning strike.
Drawing on the asphalt after a lightning strike.
In Alexander Green's short story "A Rare Camera", the killer was caught because a close lightning strike captured a crime scene on his body. The writer did not even suspect that a similar incident had actually happened.
In the summer of 1865, Dr. Derendinger from Vienna was returning home from a patient. Leaving the carriage, the doctor reached for a purse and realized that he had been pulled out. The purse was tortoiseshell, with a steel monogram in the form of two intertwined D.
Soon the doctors were called to a lightning-struck man who was found unconscious under a tree. The electric shock tore apart his clothes. Derendinger saw his own monogram on the patient's leg, as if photographed. The doctor said that somewhere in the patient's pockets his purse should be. And so it turned out: the lightning branded the criminal.
The image of a metal object can remain not only on the human body. On July 9, 1923, lightning struck the Thompson Brothers & Company office. The bolt tossed aside the wire wastebasket, leaving a clear image of it on the floorboards.
Lightning typographer
In June 1878, during a thunderstorm, businessman Auguste Lecoq was sitting at the window of his house in the suburbs of Paris and reading the Stock Exchange News. After one of the peals of thunder, the man saw a ball of lightning rapidly flying right at him. It seemed that she was about to crash into the glass. It was too late to run. Frightened Lecoq only managed to involuntarily cover himself with the newspaper. However, the flaming ball flew past the window. Auguste took a deep breath, got up from his chair and went into another room. On the way, he looked at himself in the mirror and was numb with surprise. Text appeared on his face and neck! The letters were printed upside down, but the lines were read in the mirror as they should. Taking off his shirt, Lecoq found the continuation of the text on his chest: the stock price and other notes published in the newspaper. As in the case of the American farmer Briggs, the "tattoo" lasted a matter of days.
Fulgurite - caked sand due to a lightning strike.
Lightning can copy typographic text on more than just human skin. Such an incident was first described in the 1696 pamphlet Physical Assumptions of Thunder's Most Amazing Operations. The lightning that struck on July 18, 1689 in the church of Ligny (France), knocked down 50 parishioners and destroyed the altar. The crucifix survived. On the altar cover was an inverted text from a prayer book lying next to it. The words “This is my body” and “This is my blood” remained omitted, because they were highlighted in red in the printing house. The black letters on the fabric were paler than the original, but readable without any difficulty.
The wonders of electricity
The Swiss scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) recalled in one of his books: “On a summer day in 1595, when a service was being held in Wells Cathedral, there were two or three thunderclaps, so terrible that all the parishioners fell to the floor. At the same moment lightning flashed, but no one was wounded. The most marvelous thing was that on the bodies of some of those present at this they found images of a cross. The Bishop of Wells said that his wife told him about the cross and, seeing disbelief, showed it. After that, the bishop found himself also marked with a cross on his hand. Some received crosses on their backs, others on their shoulders."
Scientists did not believe such stories, but in 1904 they had to admit that there was nothing improbable in such incidents. Abbott Parker was admitted to the hospital in the American city of Morristown, knocked down by a lightning strike. A clear drawing of a crucifix standing nearby appeared on the young man's back.
“When I first examined Parker, there were serious burns on his back,” said Dr. Jay Griswold. - I saw nothing unusual. At about five o'clock I was told that the cross began to appear there. At this time, the drawing was still indistinct. Two hours later, after examining the patient again, I saw a perfect image of the crucifixion.
Looking for an explanation
In 1946, Soviet scientists G. V. Spivak and R. V. Lukatskaya reproduced the effects of keranography in laboratory conditions. The image, applied on a zinc plate, was transferred by them to an ebonite plate. When exposed to an electric arc, the spectrum of which is rich in ultraviolet light, the surface of the plate began to emit electrons. But where there are strokes, they are emitted much more intensely than from other places. They collide with atoms in the air and create groups of two or three ionized atoms along the way. They are picked up by the field of a positively charged plate - the target. Ions are thousands of times more massive than electrons. They fly through the air without changing direction, and settle on the ebony plate. An invisible pattern of charged areas appears on its surface. It can be developed by sprinkling carbon powder on the plate.
Damage to the aircraft body after a lightning strike.
Scientists have suggested that lightning works in much the same way, but with greater strength. The flow of ions comes from objects illuminated or heated by lightning.. Falling on the human body, it temporarily changes the structure of the skin or its pigments. Black patterns appear when soot is transported along with ions. If it hits only the surface layer of the skin, the pattern will soon disappear, and if the discharge has driven the soot deep, then the "tattoo" will remain for a long time. The only thing that remains unclear is how the lightning changes the scale of the drawings. The cat on Briggs' forehead was not depicted in full size, but reduced so that it fit on the "canvas" along with its paws and tail. On the other hand, the typographic type on the altar cover in Linyi was transferred without any change in scale.
If scientists learn to reproduce ceranography in full, we can do many amazing things - from instant and painless tattoos to stamping electronic circuit boards from a ready-made template. Nature can teach us a lot if we do not turn away from her prompts.