Ball lightning rains upon town, hangs in midair: newspaper article from 1947

I came upon this newspaper clipping from a Danish newspaper (Politiken, see politiken.dk) from May 4, 1947, about an event that took place on May 3 1947:



It is from SUFOI, a Danish UFO organisation website, sufoi.dk. www.sufoi.dk...

I translated it because it is rather remarkable, we're talking a real rain of fire, and ball lightning hanging in midair. I can't help but wonder if many of the spheres now and foo fighters then, are not electrical, perhaps following invisible electro-magnetic fields disturbed by the human body, or aircraft? Or even created by aircraft rushing through charged air particle? If we disturb that field, perhaps sometimes we end up being the intersection points of fields that carry a ball lightning.

Here is my translation:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ball lighting rained upon the citizens of Svaneke.

Fantastic afternoon: Ball lightning around their legs, in and out of houses, up and down the streets.

Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm haunted Svaneke, a storm that will allways be remembered by those who experienced it.

Even before people became aware of the storm, it rained down lightning and flashes of fire upon the town, being the one pole of an electric experiment.

Lightning strayed down the streets, along the electric poles into peoples houses, and suddenly people discovered they were in dangerous proximity of balls of fire or flashes of fire.

At city bookkeeper Andersen's there was suddenly discovered a lightning ball in the air space between two men who were talking. The ball of lightning exploded with a violent bang forcing both men to their knees, but none were hurt.

A woman cyclist was crossing the church yard when she was thrown off her bicycle by another lightning ball, and she felt numb for hours thereafter.

The church, which has twice previously been struck by lightning, was struck by a lightning ball, which struck the lightning cunductor on the spire. The cunductor immediately melted, and the spire was splintered. Continues p. 10..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please note: Electricity runs underground in Denmark these days, and I can't remember a similar incident in recent times.

Perhaps we should see if there is a correllation between types of electric grids/installations and types of spheres reported around the world?

reply to post by ScientificUAPer


Excellent post! Thank you.

S&F

You're welcome, I'm glad you found it of interest!

reply to post by ScientificUAPer


hi ScientificUAPer, thanks for that...WOW...!!!

imagine being witness to such a phenomenon... awesome...

i wonder what causes these types of things...??? and why so rare...?

the thing exploding in the bookshop, with no real side effects is interesting....

could there be a link between this and spontaneous human combustion??? just thinkin....

seeya

I don't know why but that just reminded me of a MacGyver episode where he makes a ufo with power lines and a some fertilizer...

Im not kidding, thats an episode, but I wonder if there was any actual science to any of it that was inspired by Ball lightning stories like this.

imdb MacGyver

reply to post by ScientificUAPer


It would seem the town is primarily a fishing village with some industry in ship building.
I thought there might be come connection to industry that could indicate a causation for ball lightening, like, for instance, an agricultural community primarily based on textile production where wool, or other textile fibers suspended in the local atmosphere and air in the streets due to regular transport and daily industry carried static charges which were exacerbated by storm conditions to produce ball lightening phenomenon.

Alas, such is not the case. We have fishing and ship building which doubtfully leave any particulate suspension in the local air such as agriculture, coal, or other industries might where suspended particulates could carry a static electrical charge.

Interesting report although I can't find much more information than you provided in the OP

There seems to be some confusion over the year as the scant reports I've found report the incident as 1948 but I guess your source is probably the one to go by given as its from a Danish newspaper .

I find it interesting as that period was the time of numerous Green Fireball sighting in the US documented by Edward Ruppelt former director of Project Grudge and involved with project Blue Book .

Nov 1948 .. Green flares or streaks are sighted around Albuquerque, NM
Dec 1948.. A number of green fireballs are seen over around Albuquerque, NM. They are seen thereafter, nearly every night through December and January

Feb 1949.. A meeting at Los Alamos recommends the beginning of Project Twinckle to study the Green Fireball.

It would be interesting if we could find a description that mentions the colour of these Danish fireballs

I'm sorry I didn't bring you the whole story, I missed the good parts in the other clipping on the right of the screen on the link I posted. This clipping describes the results of the events, I hadn't noticed two things at first, as you will notice:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

140 fuses blew at the central plant.

Many radio receivers reported destroyed by lightning strike.

The results of the powerful storm with lightning strikes Thursday afternoon are now being seen.
In the course of the day yesterday, most phones and power lines had been repaired.
The lightning was a so-called 'ball lightning', or 'cold' lightning and it spread through the grid through the city.
Both in the street and it houses. Several places, inhabitants saw a ball lightning enter a kitchen or living room, and suddenly it would explode with a bang. Severel people were hit, without being significantly hurt.

.. [more details]

That some of these lightning bolts were powerful is evident, in that some cows on a field nearby, fell to the ground uncounscious, where they laid for some time as if dead.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- The main event seems to be 'a' single giant ball lightning that split into smaller ones as it travelled through the grid. Depending how precise the journalist got that down, but it says a single lighting.
- Cows fell about in the field! Is Thor of Valhalla doing cow punching for his afternoon pastime?

Originally posted by Druscilla

It would seem the town is primarily a fishing village with some industry in ship building. ...

We have fishing and ship building which doubtfully leave any particulate suspension in the local air such as agriculture, coal, or other industries might where suspended particulates could carry a static electrical charge.

Yea, that's right, Svaneke is all about smoked herring

Good point on thinking about solids in the air around which a charge could grow. Actually, the air may have been rich with soot from smoking! Especially if there was a low pressure trapping the air at the time, considering the thunderstorm.

Originally posted by gortex
Interesting report although I can't find much more information than you provided in the OP

...
It would be interesting if we could find a description that mentions the colour of these Danish fireballs

Good point, the clips just say fireballs, but it is not really clear what appearance they have. I'll try to look into it and see if I can find something more about it.

It can't be denied that such electrical phenomena might be electrically attracted to military installations, though I wonder if they might even kill missiles momentarily!

I'm thinking these things would be most prone to appear where electrical grids are above ground, are they often seen hovering about power plants, I wonder?

reply to post by ScientificUAPer
What do Henningsen and the SUFOI guys say about it? It's a site I read from time to time and they are ubersceptics. With this report being so unusual (even by our standards!), do they give it any attention or commentary? There have been reports of BL floating in through windows and 'popping' but i haven't heard of so many. Sounds fun.

For a couple of posters in this thread, the SUFOI home page appears to have discovered another (omfg) MOTHERSHIP in Italy.

Fascinating account. I would love to see something like this. Has anyone here ever witnessed ball lightning?

An interesting account - thankyou for posting it.

I checked the wikipedia page for the church there to see if there was any confirmation of the damage that was caused but it only mentioned damage done by lightening in 1905..

Today's octagonal spire, dating from 1789, still stands today although it had to be repaired in 1905 after being struck by lightening

en.wikipedia.org...

Was it definitely in the 1940s that this took place? Could they maybe have been writing about an earlier event in the 1940s paper?

peace
J

ScientificUAPer
This is a great post i just love these kinds of threads thanks for posting it..

Here are the actual images of ball lightning i took a few years back it was a wonderful sight the air was full of electricity ..Ive seen ball lighting twice in my life and its a rare event if you scroll down the page you can see the pics i posted i took the video down but the pics are still there..peace,sugarcookie1 S&F

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by sugarcookie1
ScientificUAPer
This is a great post i just love these kinds of threads thanks for posting it..

Here are the actual images of ball lightning i took a few years back it was a wonderful sight the air was full of electricity ..Ive seen ball lighting twice in my life and its a rare event if you scroll down the page you can see the pics i posted i took the video down but the pics are still there..peace,sugarcookie1 S&F

www.abovetopsecret.com...

this video has been removed by the user.

uhhh?

reply to post by optimus primal


Scroll down the page and you will see the pics..I took the video down a long time ago the pics are there..peace,sugarcookie1

reply to post by sugarcookie1


ah cool. you can click the "this post" (usually in blue) link on any post and the post id will be in the link in the search bar. that way when a user clicks the link it goes directly to the post in question.

cool pictures! ball lightning is so interesting.

reply to post by Druscilla

It would seem the town is primarily a fishing village with some industry in ship building.

Yes, I found the same thing using Google too!

Originally posted by sugarcookie1
ScientificUAPer
This is a great post i just love these kinds of threads thanks for posting it..

Here are the actual images of ball lightning i took a few years back it was a wonderful sight the air was full of electricity ..Ive seen ball lighting twice in my life and its a rare event if you scroll down the page you can see the pics i posted i took the video down but the pics are still there..peace,sugarcookie1 S&F

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks! And thanks for the pics, those are really some spectacular images! Especially the one that looks almost like a comet with body and a tail.

Here's supposedly a closeup of a ball lightning from the same page I linked previously:



Does that looks similar to your sighting, in your garden? In fact, until I saw your pics, I was wondering if that one was authentic, or a lamp

Originally posted by skjalddis
..
I checked the wikipedia page for the church there to see if there was any confirmation of the damage that was caused but it only mentioned damage done by lightening in 1905..

Today's octagonal spire, dating from 1789, still stands today although it had to be repaired in 1905 after being struck by lightening

..

Good point, thanks, maybe there are some church records about it.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
What do Henningsen and the SUFOI guys say about it?

I linked it in the first post. They basically don't comment on it, it's mostly just a run-down of the events.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
It's a site I read from time to time and they are ubersceptics. ..

Totally, I stopped going there for anything news related. The only function they have is collecting reports and posting them, which they do conscientiously, but they hardly ever discuss the more juicy reports, or even post the attached pics. I think they just gave up the thought that anything E.T. ever reached Earth, and decided to deal with stuff where they'd have a chance to reach a conclusion. Ball lightning, chinese lanterns, conventional military vehicles, and so forth. Obviously, it's always a matter of who is on the board at any given time, I hardly know anything about them though.