Weather Station

Fear and Lightning

by John Matthews

Summer lightning streaks across the evening sky before lurching earthward with an ominous crackle. Among modern people, lightning earns more respect than fear. Randy Cerveny says it was different for people of ancient cultures. They were grounded in a fear of lightning.

"In the ancient world, lightning controlled lives and defined entire cultures," says Cerveny, associate professor of geography at ASU.

"The Persians believed that lightning manifested divine wrath," Cerveny explains. "The Egyptian god Seth created lightning with an iron spear."

Zeus, supreme god of the ancient Greeks, used lightning to decide the outcome of the Trojan War. And the Romans believed that the god Jove was a master of lightning. Jove threw thunderbolts down to Earth to punish wicked people and warn the Roman empire of its misbehavior.

"Scandinavian mythology also stresses the weather whims of its gods," Cerveny says. "Lightning was Thor's province. The red-haired Norse god sent sparks flying when he hurled his magic hammer earthward."

The oak tree was particularly sacred to Thor. Norwegians revered the oak as the "thunder tree."

During medieval times, people often kept oak branches in their homes. People especially saved branches from trees already struck by lightning. They believed the oak protected the houses from dangerous natural forces.

"Eventually, acorns replaced the branches," Cerveny explains. Today's reminder of this tradition lingers with the acorn-shaped knobs found at the end of some window shade cords.

During the Middle Ages, people slowly began to shake their fear of lightning. Some believed that ringing church bells would disperse lightning. Many medieval church towers bore the inscription Fulgura frango. The phrase means "I break up lightning."

Testing that theory could be dangerous to the bell ringer. Cerveny recounts the findings of a medieval scholar. The scholar wrote a study titled "Proof that the ringing of bells during thunderstorms may be more dangerous than useful." He found that over a 33-year period, 386 lightning strikes on church towers killed 103 bell ringers.

Consider the plight of the 325-foot tall bell tower in Venice, Italy. The tower took its first lightning hit in 1388. Lightning strikes destroyed the tower in 1417 and in 1489. Three more strikes were recorded in 1548, 1565, and 1653.

"In 1745, a bolt brought the whole structure crashing down," Cerveny says. In 1766, churchmen installed a lightning rod designed by Benjamin Franklin. The tower has escaped damage ever since.

Cerveny says that it is doubtful that Ben Franklin actually conducted the "kite and key" experiment. The experiment would have demonstrated that lightning is electricity. But Franklin never wrote about the incident.

"However, Franklin did suggest such an experiment. Some were conducted in France in 1752," Cerveny says. "In 1753, Franklin instructed readers of his Poor Richard's Almanac that the experiments in France proved that lightning rods could protect buildings."

Franklin did say that "some people are weatherwise, but most are otherwise." He must have been a tad off center himself one Christmas Day. He nearly electrocuted himself by trying to cook a holiday turkey with an electrical current from a pair of charged glass jars!