Acts Of God?

Politicians are a breed of human that many of us rightly or wrongly tend to avoid .....

Lightening Really Can Strike Twice

.... lets be honest, they don't always have a great reputation for telling the truth, but as we don't always know for sure when they are lying, many voters just trust that they will be judged either here, or by the great adjudicator in the sky on any lies they told.

So what are we to make of the strange death in June 2020 of a local German politician from the Christian Democratic Union Party and who was also a member of the local council? 'Nico K' as the press coverage described him, was attending a garden party in the village of Hoehnstedt in the north-eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The friends were having a barbecue in the area, but were under cover, because of a local storm when Nico K. had to venture outside to relieve himself (as men do) .... and obviously he chose a spot some way from the event. Unluckily for him, the spot he chose was directly under a high-voltage power line.

While he was having a pee, a lightning bolt struck him, and he was killed. Onlookers had tried to revive the 44-year-old, but he had died at the scene. Severe storms had lashed Germany that whole weekend and although local police launched an investigation into the incident, its obviously just one of those things.

Of course as there's nothing new under the sun. In Bali, in March 2015, Gede Artata, known as 'Tato', was going to relieve himself in the forest outside, when as he pee'd a lightening bolt struck him in the genital area. He was taken immediately to Tabanan Hospital, where he was found to have suffered burns on about eight percent of his body, including his pubic area, head, chin, back, and legs. The hospital was also running tests on his heart function ..... there were no further updates reported. He was not alone in this misfortune, Croatian Ante Djindjic was knocked unconscious, when lightning struck his penis during a roadside toilet break. Djindjic said: "Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."

In Tororo, Uganda, lightning occurs on average 251 days a year. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during a football game between Bena Tshadi and visitors Basanga, all 11 members of a football team were killed by a bolt of lightning which left the other team unhurt. A further thirty spectators also received burns at the match. The locals were divided as to whether someone had cursed the team.

Roy Sullivan of Virginia was struck by lightning seven times in his life, while Sophie Frost a 14 year old Essex teen, stopped to shelter under a tree during a storm in 2009. She was hit by lightning but  survived because the 300,000-volt surge travelled through the wire of her iPod, diverting it away from her vital organs. While in August 2010, a British teenager was struck by lightning on Friday 13th, at exactly 13:13pm.

Christ the Redeemer Struck By Lightening

Even Christ is not safe. In January 2014 a lightening strike broke the finger off the right hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

However Marta Maikia from Bulgaria is more of a conductor of lightening rods for others, she married 3 times, and both the first two husbands were struck and killed by lightening (one in Bulgaria, and one on holiday in Spain), while the third, her doctor, was also struck by lightening (fate not known). 

In the old days we used to put these down to being acts of god ......