The Man Hit By Lightning 7x and Survived

Roy Cleveland Sullivan (Feb.7, 1912 – Sept. 28, 1983) was a U.S. park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven different occasions and survived all of them. For this reason, he gained a nickname "Human Lightning Conductor" or "Human Lightning Rod". Sullivan is recognized by Guinness World Records as the person being struck by lightning more recorded times than any other human being. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 71.

Sullivan was described as a brawny man with a broad, rugged face, who resembled the actor Gene Hackman. He was avoided by people later in life because of their fear of being hit by lightning, and this saddened him. He once recalled "For instance, I was walking with the chief ranger one day when lightning struck way off. The chief said, 'I'll see you later.'" On September 28, 1983, Sullivan died at the age of 71 from self-inflicted gunshot wound in the stomach. It is believed that rejected love by a woman was a cause of his suicide.

The chances of being struck by lightning are very slim; the chances of being struck by lightning twice (on different days) is seemingly impossible; so what are the odds of being struck by lightning seven times? With our world record holder, Roy Sullivan, the events happened as follows:

1942 – Sullivan was hit for the first time when he was in a lookout tower. The lightning bolt struck him in a leg and he lost a nail on his big toe.

1969 – The second bolt hit him in his truck when he was driving on a mountain road. It knocked him unconscious and burned his eyebrows.

1970 – The third strike burned his left shoulder while in his front yard.

1972 – The next hit happened in a ranger station. The strike set his hair on fire. After that, he began to carry a pitcher of water with him.

1973 – A lightning bolt hit Sullivan on the head, blasted him out of his car, and again set his hair on fire.

1974 – Sullivan was struck by the sixth bolt in a campground, injuring his ankle.

1977 – The seventh and final lightning bolt hit him when he was fishing. Sullivan was hospitalized for burns in his chest and stomach.

His “lightning hats” are on display in New York’s and South Carolina’ s Guinness World Exhibit Hall.

All the seven strikes were documented by the superintendent of Shenandoah National Park, R. Taylor Hoskins, and were verified by doctors. Sullivan himself recalled that the first time he was struck by lightning was not in 1942 but much earlier. When he was a child, he was helping his father to cut wheat in a field, when a thunderbolt struck the blade of his scythe without injuring himself. Because he could not prove the fact later, he never claimed it.

Sullivan's wife was also struck once, when a storm suddenly arrived as she was out hanging clothes in their back yard. Her husband was helping her at the time, but escaped unharmed.

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Jonathon Schacher - Pit Bull Biter in Saskatchewan, Canada

“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
– John B. Bogart, New York Sun editor of long, long ago

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September 2009. It's a true-to-life case of man bites dog.

A Saskatoon man says he unleashed his inner canine in order to stop a wandering pit bull terrier from attacking his neighbour's dog about two weeks ago.

In a Sept. 24 interview, Jonathon Schacher said he heard a scream outside his home and looked outside to see the pit bull and the other dog entangled.

He said he ran outside and tried to pull the aggressive dog off the other, but the pit bull had its jaw locked around his neighbour dog's muzzle.

He tried yanking the pit bull off, but Schacher said that didn't work.
Trying to pry its jaw open didn't work either.
"I could just feel I needed to do something, and so I bit the dog right on the nose," he said.

He said the pit bull yelped in pain and he was able to pull on its jowls to give up his attack on the other animal.

Amazingly, the pit bull turned meek, Schacher said.
"He just sat down and his tail started wagging, and then I let go of him." But that's not all. Schacher said the dog licked him on the face, seemingly in supplication.

Schacher's neighbour told CBC News the pit bull left the neighbourhood following the incident.

Believe it Or Not?

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Fu Bingli - Strongest Index Finger

Fu Bingli, a kung fu master from China, has proved he has the strongest fingers in the world.

Bingli – who has been studying martial arts for 32 years since the age of just seven – can stand upside down supporting himself on just one index finger.

On Monday he scooped the Guinness world record for completing 12 press ups on just one finger of his right hand.

"I've been training since I was seven years old and my index finger has as much strength in it as most people's entire body," said Fu of Lianyungang, eastern China.

Last week the world's smallest man, Khagendra Thapa Magar, revealed his wish for his 18th birthday to be officially recognised by the Guinness World Records and to find a wife.

The 2ft tall teenager is a full head and shoulders shorter than He Pingping of China, who at 2ft 5in is the current holder of the world's smallest man title. He is now waiting for official recognition from Guinness World Records.

"Now I have turned 18 I want two things: to be recognised by Guinness and to find a wife who is small like me," said Khagendra.

The tiny teen, who weighs just 10lbs, first contacted the Guinness Book of World Records three years ago, hoping to be recognised as the world's smallest boy.

Khagendra has become something of a celebrity in his native Nepal, where politicians have backed his Guinness campaign.

Born weighing only 1lb 5oz in the remote Baglung District, 125 miles from the capital Kathmandu, Khagendra's family members believe he was destined for greatness.

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Being Different - Human Oddities (1981-Full Movie)

A tribute to the spirit and humanity of people who are physically different from the average: very tall and very large men and women, a bearded woman and her long-time husband, Siamese twins joined at the midsection, and several little people including actor Billy Barty. We meet some at Gibsonton, Florida, where carnival folk winter. They talk about their lives and accomplishments. The camera also goes on the road to visit a grandfather with a distinctive face, a legless mechanic from Kentucky on a second honeymoon in LA, a marathon runner and motivational speaker who has no feet, a karate student with partial limbs, and an armless, down-to-earth mom in Texas.

* Written & Directed by Harry Rasky
* Narrated by Christopher Plummer

Being Different is an overview of several “human oddities” — people who would, in an earlier, crueler era, have been called “freaks.” (Even the term “human oddities” seems a bit insensitive, but so far I don’t think anyone’s come up with a good term which fulfills the unstated PC mandate of “distinction without qualitative judgement.”) Our narrator, Christopher Plummer, makes allusions to both Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver’s Travels while gazing thoughtfully into a funhouse mirror. What would it be like, he muses, if we stayed that way?

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The most famous of the people here are Emmett and Percilla Rejano, who are respectively the Alligator Man and the Monkey Girl; together, they’re billed as the world’s strangest married couple, and they seem very happy together. But Percilla’s hairy face demonstrates that, even in Gibsonton, there are limits to the extremes that the “normal” locals can accept easily; Percilla habitually wears a concealing wrap when out in public.

Louise Capps was born in the small town of Gunbarrel City, Texas, in 1952. She was abandoned at birth by her mother, an American Indian, who was an alcoholic. Louise became a ward of the state, but was soon adopted by Eugene Capps and his wife. Mrs. Capps was a schoolteacher and encouraged Louise to use her feet, teaching her that she could do anything that anyone with arms can do.

Louise married twice and was single again when the film crew for Being Different interviewed her in 1979. One of her husbands, Bruce Hill, was a human blockhead she met in the sideshow at the Texas State Fair. She claims she married so that she could have children, and had always wanted a son with dark hair and eyes like hers, and a blonde, blue-eyed daughter. Both of her children are featured in the documentary. Ward Hall says that blonde, blue-eyed Nola would go on to be a showgirl with the sideshow. Louise enjoys swimming, playing guitar, embroidery, rollerskating and horseback riding, and has a license to drive either a car or a truck. The documentary Being Different (1980) features her prominently, and she is shown painting pottery, typing on a typewriter, cutting her son's hair, roller skating, driving her car, riding a horse and country-western dancing.

Robert Owen 'Bob' Melvin, the Man with Two Faces, was born in Lancaster, Missouri in 1920 and died in 1995. He was also called 'The Modern-Day Elephant Man'. He appeared in several movies, including the documentary Being Different in 1980 and the schlock horror The Sentinel in 1977. Doctors examined Bob but were unable to find a diagnosis for his deformity; Bob said it was simply "god's sense of humor". Towards the end of his life, he was found to have neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes the spontaneous growth of fibrous tumors. Manifestations of NF differ greatly from patient to patient; some simply have hyper-pigmented or "cafe au lait" spots, while others, such as Grace McDaniels, are greatly deformed. Bob Melvin was a friendly, church-going man, beloved by all who knew him in his hometown of Lancaster. He was married and had a daughter and a granddaughter. Bob passed away in his hometown of Lancaster, Missouri, on November 19, 1995.

NOTE:
It is written in the Holy Scriptures: Romans 9:20-21 - "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? "

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BodyShock - The Girl With 8 Limbs

BodyShock - The Girl With 8 Limbs

This Documentary tells the story of Lakshmi Tatma, the girl with eight limbs. Two-year-old Lakshmi was born with one of the world's rarest physical abnormalities. Joined at the pelvis to her half-formed conjoined twin.

Lakshmi Tatama is an Indian girl born in 2005 in a village in Araria district, Bihar, having "4 arms and 4 legs." She was actually a pair of ischiopagus conjoined twins where one twin was headless due to its head atrophying and chest underdeveloping in the womb. The result looked like one child with four arms and four legs.

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In her remote Indian village she is revered as a living god. With exclusive access, this film follows Lakshmi's family on an epic emotional journey from their rural home to a hospital in Bangalore where her parents must decide whether to proceed with potentially life-threatening surgery to remove her extra limbs.

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BANGALORE: Doctors at a superspeciality hospital here, who have commenced a complicated surgery on two year-old Lakshmi, a conjoined twin, on Tuesday successfully separated the spines. "The condition of the child is stable," doctors said.

A team of neurosurgeons have completed their part of the surgery, separated the spines, which the doctors described as "most critical" part of the 40-hour operation that began at 7 am (IST) on Tuesday. Dr Sharan Patil, the orthopaedic surgeon who heads the five-member core team performing the operation at Sparsh Hospital, said the separation of spines has been smooth without any complications.

"Paediatric surgeons are now operating and trying to separate the organs and then orthopaedic surgeons will try to reconstruct the pelvic ring," he said. "With the reconstruction of the pelvic ring, the first stage of the surgery will be completed," Patil said. He expressed hope that the team will be able to complete the first stage of the operation on Tuesday night.

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NOV 7. 2007
It took more than 30 surgeons 27 hours to not only remove two of Lakshmi's arms and two of her legs but also to rebuild much of her body and save her organs. They say the chances of death were as high as 25 percent.

The cost of such a complex procedure would have been $625,000, far too great for the Lakshmi's family to afford. The hospital's foundation paid. "We are very grateful to all the doctors for seeing our plight and deciding to help us," Tatma's father, Shambhu, told The Associated Press. Dr Sharan Patil (photo on the right) - ->

NOTE:
Conjoined twins occur in about one in every 200,000 births, and their survival rate can be as low as 5 percent. Historical records over the past 500 years detail about 600 surviving sets of conjoined twins - more than 70% of which have been female twins.