The man got off with a few scratches.
However, firearms when carried by men appear to attract the lightning. Soldiers are often enough struck when in the exercise of their calling, when they are carrying arms.
But, curiously enough, many cases are known in which lightning has struck a loaded gun, melting the bullet and part of the barrel, without setting fire to the powder.
Thus, at Prefling, lightning penetrated the room of a gamekeeper, yet none of the many firearms hanging up went off. The wall was damaged between each rifle. One was standing in a corner of the room; the wall was injured on a level with the lower end, and above it a hole was to be seen in the woodwork.
On June 1, 1761, near Nimburg, lightning burst into the house of a horse-keeper, where it struck a loaded carbine leaning against a wall on the ground floor. The muzzle was slightly melted by the spark, which ran along the barrel to the trigger, and which it soldered together in parts. There were five bullets melted and soldered together in the magazine and the wads much scorched. However, incredible as it may seem, there was no explosion.
In another case the lightning went the whole length of a rifle, both inside and outside, leaving a direct line of fusion, and yet, incredible though it may seem, no shot was fired though the fusion reached the powder.
These phenomena appear quite extraordinary, and altogether incompatible with the usual theory of the combustibleness of gunpowder. To what cause can the invulnerability of the explosive matter be due?
Doubtless to the quickness of the lightning, which does not leave the powder time enough to ignite.
Powder magazines are frequently struck by lightning, and this subject is one of very great interest; they are not always blown up, in spite of the vast quantities of explosive materials which they contain.
Here are some examples which go to prove this statement:—