Everyone should, one hopes, know that lightning storms and trees do not mix well. The long-standing advice is that standing under or near a tree during a storm is a bad idea verging on the suicidal. Well, it turns out that it isn't just trees, it's Apples. As in iPods.
BOSTON (Reuters) – Here's a handy tip for joggers: If you think you might get caught in a thunderstorm, leave your music player at home.
Doctors at Vancouver General Hospital in Canada said a 37-year-old jogger wearing an iPod was burned on his chest, neck and face after the man and a nearby tree were struck by lightning in 2005. The burns traced the path of the earphones, they said.
The patient's eardrums were ruptured and the tiny bones in his middle ears were dislocated, the doctors wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
The man's jawbone broke in four places and both jaw joints were dislocated, probably because the electric current made his jaw muscles contract violently, Eric Heffernan, Dr. Peter Munk and Dr. Luck Louis wrote in their letter.
The metal in the earphones helped channel the current and cause the injuries, they said.
"Although the use of a device such as an iPod may not increase the chances of being struck by lightning, in this case, the combination of sweat and metal earphones directed the current to, and through, the patient's head," they said.
Who knew apples attract lightning? Probably any earphones in a lightning storm are a really bad idea.
Running in a lightning storm isn’t such a good idea, either. Though, if you are already out, there aren’t a lot of options. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to chew through the restraints.
It occured to me that I’ve never read of medieval knights, in armor and on horseback (higher than the surroundings) getting struck by lightening. It surely must have happened.