ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is electricity with his famous kite-flying experiment and soon gave his discovery practical application by inventing the lightning rod. It had been the custom for centuries in Europe to dispel lightning from thunderstorms by ringing church bells. The tenacity of this practice was remarkable since high church steeples make excellent targets for lightning. Furthermore, electricity easily travels down a rain-wetted bell rope to the ringer. One eighteenth-century European source reports that over a 33-year period, lightning struck 386 church steeples, killing 103 bell ringers.
