On July 27, 1789, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, a fireball of about the size of a cannon-ball, fell in a great hall at Feltri (Marche Trevisane) in which six hundred people were seated, wounded seventy and killed ten, putting out all the lights.
On July 11, 1809, about eleven o'clock in the morning, a fireball penetrated into the church of Chateauneuf-les-Moustiers (Basses-Alpes) just as the bell was ringing and a large congregation had taken their seats. Nine persons were killed on the spot and eighty-two others were wounded. All the dogs that had got into the church were killed. A woman who was in a hut on a neighbouring hill saw three fireballs descend that day, and made sure they would reduce the village to ashes.
Müsschenbroek recounts the following incident which took place at Solingen in 1711. M. Pyl, the Pastor at Duytsbourg, was preaching one Sunday, when in the middle of a storm a fireball fell into the church through the clock tower and exploded. The sanctuary was set on fire and became thick with smoke. Three persons were killed and more than a hundred were wounded.
From the Bulletin of the Société Astronomique de France the following narrative contributed to it by Mlle. de Soubbotine, a member of this society, has been taken:—
"A terrible storm broke out at Ouralsk on May 22, 1901. It was a fête day and the streets were thronged with people. Towards five in the afternoon some young men and girls, twenty-one in all, had taken refuge in the vestibule of a house, and a girl of seventeen, Mlle. K., had sat down on the threshold, her back turned towards the street. Suddenly there was a violent clap of thunder, and in front of the door there appeared a dazzlingly brilliant ball of fire, gradually descending towards where they were all grouped. After touching Mlle. K.'s head, who bowed down at once, the fireball fell on the ground in the middle of the party, made a circuit of it, then forcing its way into the room of the master of the house, whose boots it touched and singed, it wreaked havoc with the apartment, broke through the wall into a stove in the adjoining room, smashed the stove-pipe, and carried it off with such violence that it was dashed against the opposite wall, and went out through the broken window.
"After the first feeling of fright, this is what transpired. The door near which Mlle. K. was seated had been thrown back into the court, and in the ceiling there were two holes of about 18 centimetres each.
"The young girl, still seated with her head bowed down, looked as though she were asleep. Some of the people were walking in the courtyard, having seen and heard nothing, and the others were all lying in the vestibule in a dead faint. Mlle. K. was dead. The fireball had struck her on the nape of her neck and had proceeded down her back and left hip, leaving a black mark all along. There was a sore on one hand, with some blood on it, and one of her shoes was torn completely off, and there was a small hole in one of the stockings.
"All the victims became deaf."
On September 10, 1845, at about two in the afternoon, in the course of a violent storm, a fireball came down the chimney into a room in a house in the village of Salagnac (Creuse). A child and three women who were in the room suffered no harm from it. Then it rolled into the middle of the kitchen, and passed near the feet of a young peasant who was standing in it. After which it went into an adjoining room, and disappeared without leaving any trace. The women tried to persuade the man to go in and see whether he could not stamp it out, but he had once allowed himself to be electrified in Paris, and thought it prudent to refrain. In a little stable hard by, it was found afterwards that the fireball had killed a pig. It had gone through the straw without setting fire to it.
On July 12, 1872, a new form of fireball made its appearance in the Commune of Hécourt (Oise). It was of the size of an egg, and it was seen burning upon a bed. Efforts were made in vain to extinguish it, and presently the entire house, together with the neighbouring dwellings and barns, became a prey to the flames.