“The inventor of pantyhose really left us quite a legacy.”
Lightning experimenter diesIn 1753, Professor Georg Richmann of St. Petersburg, Moscow, was killed by his experiment with lightning. One year after Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment, Richmann attached a wire to the top of his house and led it down to an iron bar suspended above “the electric needle”and a bowl of water partly filled with iron filings*. It was reported that during a storm, Richmann was struck while about a foot from the bar, and closely observing the needle. “A globe of blue and whitish fire about four inches diameter”from the bar struck Richmann's forehead”with “an explosion like that of a small cannon.”His assistant, M. Sokolaw, who survived, was thrown to the floor feeling blows on his back. He found marks of burning hot wire fragments on the back of his clothes. |
