these weather phenomena cannot be certain, they appear to be mostly about two observations of St. Elmo's fire with perhaps some ball lightning and even a direct lightning strike to the ship thrown into the mix. James Braid On 20 February 1817, during a severe electrical storm, James Braid, surgeon at Lord Hopetoun's mines at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, had an extraordinary experience whilst on horseback: Weeks earlier, reportedly on 17 January 1817, a luminous snowstorm occurred in Vermont and New Hampshire. Saint Elmo's fire appeared as static discharges on roof peaks, fence posts, and the hats and fingers of people. Thunderstorms prevailed over central New England. Charles Darwin Charles Darwin noted the effect while aboard the Beagle. He wrote of the episode in a letter to J. S. Henslow that one night when the Beagle was anchored in the estuary of the Río de la Plata: He also describes the above night in his book The Voyage of the Beagle: Richard Henry Dana In Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., describes seeing a corposant in the horse latitudes of the northern Atlantic Ocean. However, he may have been talking about ball lightning; as mentioned earlier, it is often erroneously identified as St. Elmo's fire: The observation by R. H. Dana of this phenomenon in Two Years Before the Mast is a straightforward description of an extraordinary experience apparently only known to mariners and airline pilots. Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla created St. Elmo's fire in 1899 while testing a Tesla coil at his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. St. Elmo's fire was seen around the coil and was said to have lit up the wings of butterflies with blue halos as they flew around. Mark Heald A minute before the crash of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin's LZ 129 Hindenburg on 6 May 1937, Professor Mark Heald (1892–1971) of Princeton saw St. Elmo's Fire flickering along the airship's back. Standing outside the main gate to the Naval Air Station, he watched, together with his wife and son, as the airship approached the mast and dropped her bow lines. A minute thereafter, by Heald's estimation, he first noticed a dim "blue flame" flickering along the backbone girder about one-quarter the length abaft the bow to the tail. There was time for him to remark to his wife, "Oh, heavens, the thing is afire," for her to reply, "Where?" and for