Lightning 
Everybody knows that lightning is electricity—and lots at | 
it. As a matter of fact, one cannot get through grade school 
without hearing several times about Benjamin Franklin and 
the time he flew a kite during a thunderstorm, and how he 
drew a spark from a key attached to the kite string. Flying 
kites during thunderstorms is not a practice to be recom- 
mended, however, and it was lucky for old Benjamin Frank- 
lin that the spark he drew from the key was as small as it was. 
After accounts of the experiment of Franklin were published, 
the experiment was repeated in several countries. In St. 
Petersburg a certain hapless professor, while flying a kite, 
was struck dead on the spot by a flash of lightning which en- 
tered his forehead and left him in such an’ advanced state of 
decomposition that he had to be buried in great haste. 
LIGHTNING STRIKES 
The effects of being struck by lightning are often very 
ghastly—perhaps leaving the victim covered with terrible 
burns, or with no outward mark at all. In other cases the skin 
may be turned black, but otherwise remain quite intact, 
whereas the whole interior of the body is reduced to ashes 
or liquefied and the bones splintered as though the very mar- 
row in them had exploded. These grim details should dis- 
courage experiments with kites. 
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