This day in history: 16 year-old Jeremy Brenno was playing golf when he hit a bench out of frustration with his club. This caused the club shaft to break, bounce back, and pierce his heart, killing him.
Golf deaths are rare but not uncommon. A six-year-old girl died on golf course in Utah in 2019 after being hit in the head by her dad’s golf ball.
It is lightning however that kills most golfers. Between 2006 to 2016 nine golfers died from lightning strikes.
This Day in History: A superbolt, more powerful than an ordinary lightning bolt, struck a cornfield near Leland, Illinois, on this day in 1959, leaving a crater 1 foot deep, and breaking windows in homes almost 1 mile away.
Superbolts are rather loosely defined as strikes with a source energy of more than 100 gigajoule [100 GJ] (most lightning strikes come in at around 1 gigajoule [1 GJ]). Events of this magnitude occur about as frequently as one in 240 strikes. They are not categorically distinct from ordinary lightning strikes, and simply represent the uppermost edge of a continuum. Contrary to popular misconception, superbolts can be either positively or negatively charged, and the charge ratio is comparable to that of "ordinary" lightning.
"Superbolts are the most powerful lightning on Earth, with discharges so strong that they cannot be reproduced in the laboratory. The bolts also display geographic and seasonal attributes opposite that of regular lightning, adding to their mystery." Source
This Day in History: On this day (November 21) in 2016, a sudden powerful wind in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who succumbed to respiratory failure. This was due to a stark 37 mph wind that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks, particles small enough to enter people's lungs.
This anomaly may not be the strangest weather event in history. Like something straight out of Charles Fort's "Book of the Damned" there have been throughout history instances of raining fish and frogs. In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder documented storms of frogs and fish. In 1794, French soldiers saw toads fall from the sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near the French city of Lille. Rural inhabitants in Yoro, Honduras claim 'fish rain' happens there every summer, a phenomenon they call Lluvia de Peces.
On March 3, 1876, a meat shower occurred in Bath County, Kentucky, where what appeared to be chunks of red meat measuring approximately 2 by 2 inches fell from the sky.
In June 1874, an estimated 12 trillion locusts devasted the American Great Plains. Laura Ingalls-Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) wrote of the aftermath: “The whole prairie was changed. The grasses did not wave; they had fallen in ridges. The rising sun made all the prairie rough with shadows where the tall grasses had sunk against each other. The willow trees were bare. In the plum thickets, only a few plumpits hung to the leafless branches. The nipping, clicking, gnawing sound of the grasshoppers’ eating was still going on.”
In 1815, Indonesia went without a summer, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora. This also affected Europe, and the dark summer had a role in inspiring Mary Shelley’s famous horror classic, Frankenstein.
On January 6, 1839, a massive winter storm descended on Ireland and devasted Dublin. "A quarter of Dublin's buildings were damaged, and it was described as a "sacked city." Fires spread across County Longford, with winds picking up fires and dropping them from the sky over the rest of the countryside. Fields were stripped, and hundreds of thousands of trees fell. Tales say that water and fish were picked up and hurled miles across the countryside, that salt from the ocean doused fields in the center of the country." Source
On Black Monday in 1360 (Easter Monday) during the Hundred Years' War (1337–60), a freak hail storm struck and killed an estimated 1,000 English soldiers. The storm was so devastating that it caused more English casualties than any of the previous battles of the war.
On June 15, 1960, in what came to be called "Satan's Storm," a surge of heat encompassed parts of central Texas and temperatures rose to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Parents at the time wrapped their children in wet towels and bed sheets, and many there thought this was the end of the world.
In the late summer of 2001, southern India experienced rain that was blood red in color.
On January 2017 it snowed...in the Sahara Desert.
Then there is the case of Roy Sullivan, a man who holds the Guinness World Record for surviving seven different lightning strikes. He was struck on April 1942, July 1969, July 1970, spring 1972, August 1972, June 1976 and June 1977. Sullivan was a United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
This Day in History: On this day in 1998 an entire Congolese soccer team of 11 players were fatally struck by lightning while playing. Local investigators blamed the lightning bolt on witchcraft because none of the players on the opposing team from nearby Basangana village were injured. The fear of witchcraft induced lightning is very deep in parts of Africa. People believe that a witch can deploy lightning to kill people or livestock of selected targets.
While the witchcraft angle is interesting, there have been many mass deaths and injuries by lightning in the past...witch-induced or not. In 1769 lightning struck gunpowder kept in a church in Brescia, Italy...killing 3000 people.
On June 30, 1980, a lightning incident killed 11 students in Biego primary school in Kenya.
On November 2 1994 a lightning strike led to the explosion of fuel tanks in Dronka, Egypt, killing 469 people.
Sixty-eight dairy cows were killed by lightning in New South Wales, Australia on Halloween day in 2005.
Thirty people were killed by lightning in Ushari Dara, Pakistan in 2007.
A lightning strike on June 8 2011 sent 77 Air Force cadets to the hospital when it struck in the middle of a training camp at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
323 reindeer were killed by lightning in Norway in 2016. Norwegian Environment Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen said it had never heard of such a death toll before. He said he did not know if multiple strikes occurred, but that they all died in "one moment".
A lightning strike in 2018 killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more at a Seventh-Day Adventist church in Rwanda.
In April 2021, at least 76 people across India were killed by lightning strike on a single weekend.
On August 04 2021, 17 people were killed by a single lightning strike in Shibganj Upazila of Chapainawabganj district in Bangladesh; 16 people died on the spot and the other one died by heart attack while seeing the others.
The most-stricken human in the world is Roy Sullivan, who holds the Guinness World Record for surviving seven different lightning strikes. Sullivan was a United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
