by Kieran McGovern Pre-Intermediate
In 1942 lightning struck Roy C. Sullivan for the first time. The US park ranger was working up in a lookout tower when a bolt shot through his leg. It knocked his big toenail off.
‘I was lucky,’ Roy told his friends. ‘I can live without one big toenail. And at least it won’t happen again! Lightning never strikes twice.’
Unfortunately this is not quite correct. Lightning is unlikely to hit the same spot on the ground twice. But tall buildings and structures are different. A 60-meter tower in Florida can expect a hit every year.
Another Strike
From then on Roy did stay away from towers. And for
nearly thirty years nothing happened.
Then in 1969 Roy was driving along a mountain road
during a storm. He thought he was safe inside his car.
He was wrong.
The lightning bolt
knocked
Roy unconscious. It burned off his
eyebrows. ‘Why me?’ Roy complained when
he woke up in hospital. ‘This is the second
time!’
Another strike happened
just a year later. Roy was walking across his yard to
get the mail. The lightning bolt burned left his
shoulder.
Roy’s bad luck
continued. In 1972 he was standing in the office at the
ranger station. Perfectly safe? Not for Roy.
This time the lightning set his hair on fire.
‘This is not fair!’ cried Roy as he threw a
bucket of water over his head.
Hat
It took a year for his hair to grow back. He began
wearing a hat. Surely he was safe now?
The next strike went through Roy’s hat and set
his hair on fire again. Throwing him out of his truck,
it knocked his left shoe off and it burned his legs.
A sixth strike came on a campsite in 1976. This one
injured his ankle.
The final lightning strike
occurred on a fishing trip in 1977. It sent Roy back to
hospital with chest and stomach burns.
Why?
Why did Roy suffer a record seven lightning strikes?
Nobody knows for sure. Roy came from Virginia, in the
south of the USA. Storms and lightning strikes are
common in that part of the world. And Roy’s work
did put him more at risk.
Perhaps it was just bad luck. But in a way Roy was a
very lucky man. After all, he is the only person
to survive
seven lightning
strikes. He died in 1983.
