A strange lightning strike in Singac, New Jersey, left residents baffled in June 1910 because it happened while the sun was still shining.
There was no sign of a storm overhead, only a distant cloud far to the west, when a bolt struck the liberty pole in front of Hassier’s Hotel. The force shattered the thirty-foot shaft and terrified a team of mules tied nearby.
The frightened animals broke loose and ran for two miles, wrecking the wagon behind them. When they were finally stopped, an astonishing discovery was made: the lightning had melted the iron shoes from each mule’s feet, yet the animals themselves were otherwise unharmed.
Local experts were puzzled until an investigation suggested the bolt may have traveled along a telephone wire from a storm zone before discharging into the pole.
Lightning Bolt Melts Shoes On Feet Of Mules
SINGAC, New Jersey. — While the sun was shining here yesterday and there was no indication of an electrical storm except a cloud far to the west, a bolt of lightning struck a liberty pole in front of Hassier’s Hotel, shattering the shaft and scaring a team of mules belonging to Silas Jones so badly that they ran two miles, wrecking the wagon to which they were attached.
The team was tied to a ring attached to the pole, which was thirty feet high. After the animals had been stopped it was found that the bolt of lightning melted the iron shoes from each of the mules. Otherwise they were uninjured.
The source of the lightning bolt that struck the pole puzzled all the local electrical experts and meteorologists, but Dr. Joseph W. Queckenbush, who made a careful investigation, found that a telephone wire running from Singac passed so close to the flag pole as to touch it.
At the time the pole was struck a fierce thunder storm was raging in the vicinity of Singac, and the theory is that lightning, striking the telephone wire in the storm zone, travelled over the cable until it encountered the uninsulated liberty pole, where the full force of the bolt was spent.
Source: The Barre Daily Times. Barre, Vt. June 20, 1910.
