Case file · High strangeness
Ball lightning in a Paris tailor's room
In July 1852, a fireball 'the size of a head' came down the chimney of a tailor's room on rue Saint-Jacques, rolled across the floor like a kitten, rose and exploded up the flue.
1852 CE · 48.85, 2.34 · status: account
The account
The physicist Jacques Babinet reported the case to the Academy of Sciences, and Camille Flammarion repeated it in his books on lightning. It became the classic description of ball lightning.
The sceptical view
Ball lightning is now accepted as real but poorly understood; single-witness reports of this kind cannot be checked.
Connections in the atlas
- The Devil comes to Widecombe church