Abstract
ON Wednesday the 20th ult., about midnight, a house at Mont Dore, in the Auvergne, was destroyed by a fireball during a severe thunderstorm. My brother, who has lately arrived from thence, did not see the ball himself, but his valet, an intelligent Italian, saw it distinctly. He describes it as a globe of fire about half a metre in diameter, which approached the house obliquely, seeming to pass over a distance of 200 metres in about half a minute. It entered the door of the house and there burst. My brother heard the explosion as well as his valet, and describes it as a dull thud like that of a smothered blast. The house, which was a wooden one, was set on fire, a child burnt to death, and another inmate seriously, if not mortally, injured. Several inhabitants of Mont Dore are said by the valet to have seen the ball, one of whom lived in the adjacent house.
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TENNANT, J. A Fireball. Nature 24, 285 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024285c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024285c0
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