On July 2, 1717, lightning struck a church at Seidenburg, near Zittau, during the service; forty-eight people were killed or wounded.
On June 26, 1783, lightning struck the church of Villars-le-Terroy, when its bells were being rung; it killed eleven people, and wounded thirteen.
On board the sloop Sapho, in February, 1820, six men were killed by a stroke of lightning and fourteen seriously wounded.
On board the ship Repulse, near the shores of Catalonia, on April 13, 1813, lightning killed eight men in the rigging and wounded nine, of whom several succumbed.
On July 11, 1857, three hundred people were assembled in the church at Grosshad, a small village, two miles from Düren, when lightning struck it; one hundred people were wounded, thirty of them seriously. Six were killed, and they were six hardy men.
Early in July, 1865, lightning fell on the territory of Coray (Finisterre) in a warren where sixteen people were weeding. Six men and a child were killed by the same stroke, and three others were severely wounded. Several were stripped naked, their garments being scattered in rags over the ground; their shoes were cut to pieces and all broken. A curious point is that the workers were struck at a distance of 100 yards from each other.
On July 12, 1887, at Mount Pleasant (Tennessee, U.S.A.), lightning killed nine people who were taking refuge under an oak during a storm. These formed part of a procession which was conducting a negress to her last home.
Here is another very curious and complex case—
On the last Sunday in June, 1867, during Vespers, lightning struck a church at Dancé, Canton of Saint-Germain-Laval (Loire). A deathlike silence succeeded the noise of the explosion, then a cry was heard, then a hundred more. The curé, who thought that he alone had received the whole electric discharge—and was in reality unhurt—left his place, where he was enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke, and spoke to his parishioners from the Communion rails, to reassure them. "It is nothing," he said. "Keep your places; there is no harm done."
He was mistaken; twenty-five to thirty people had been more or less struck. Four were carried away unconscious, but the worst treated of all was the treasurer. In raising him they perceived that his eyes were open, but dull and veiled, and he gave no sign of life. His clothes were burnt, and his shoes, which were torn and full of blood, were removed from his feet.