Free Republic

This is the extraordinary moment a photographer captured bolts of lightning striking not one, but two Chicago landmarks at the same time. Electricity rushed down the lightning rods atop the The Willis Tower and the Trump Tower at the exact same instant last night. Seen through the rain from the Hancock Tower, the strikes lit up the sky around. (Great photos.)

My coworkers and I took a political test with 100 questions, 10 in 10 categories. I was by far the most conservative. 91/100. Most of my liberal coworkers got between 10/100 and 30/100. Only a couple others got above 50/100. Ugh. The breakdown. life - 10/10 abortion is wrong guns - 10/10 support no restriction on gun ownership marriage - 10/10 man and woman only, homosexuality is wrong healthcare - 10/10 repeal Obamacare and we need tort reform. immigration - 2/10 since I oppose HB1070. We need the workers. The McCain path to citizenship I support. environment - 10/10 too...

Richard Butler was about to ask Bethany Lott to marry him last weekend when the cruelest hand of nature interrupted. They were at the top of North Carolina's Max Patch Bald , a 4,600-foot mountain on the Tennessee border. Before the ring was out of his hand, the couple was struck by lightning. Lott, 25, was instantly killed and Butler, 30, was knocked down. "She was probably five feet in front of me, so given the incline, she was a good bit higher than me, but it jumped to me," Butler told the Ashville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times. "I was spun...

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - A Knoxville man was minutes from proposing to his girlfriend on a hike in Western North Carolina Friday when she was struck and killed by lightning. "Everything went black. I was spun 180 degrees, thrown several feet back. My legs turned to jelly. My shoes were smoking and the bottom of my feet felt like they were on fire," Richard Butler said. For a moment, he said he thought he was the only one hit by the bolt of lightning. However, it was his girlfriend Bethany Lott, 25, who took the direct hit. She was hiking just...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) -- A lightning strike in Yellowstone National Park injured nine people waiting to see Old Faithful geyser erupt. One man hit by the bolt on Tuesday was hospitalized.

UPDATE: President Barack Obama's Memorial Day address at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood was just getting started when lightning and heavy, gusting rains stopped the proceedings. The president, umbrella in hand, encouraged spectators to get to a safe place to ride out the storm and said he would hold off the ceremony because he didn't want anyone to get hurt. "Excuse me, everybody listen up," Obama told the crowd. "We are a little bit concerned about lightning. This may not be safe. I know that all of you are here to commemorate the fallen. ... What we'd like to...

This one was pretty obvious, but I'll do something different. If you want to see spectacular ash clouds lit with incandescence and laced with lightning, go to the link at the top. For the feature today, I thought I'd go in a different direction; the aftermath of the jokulhlaup. Here's a video up close of both the eruption and the meltwater pulse. It's got a soft soundtrack. Video 1 Now, as a bonus, if you haven't seen this video, you should. Clicking the link should load it in Windows Video Player; (it's a WMV file). I don't know how to...

Lightning makes mushrooms more plentiful, according to ongoing research that offers a solid scientific basis for Japanese farming lore. For generations, Japanese farmers have welcomed storms over their fields based on the belief that lightning strikes provoke plentiful harvests of mushrooms, which are staples of Japanese cuisine. Currently, mushroom demand is so high that dealers are increasingly turning to foreign suppliers. Japan imports about 50,000 tons of mushrooms a year, mainly from China and South Korea. As part of a four-year study, scientists in northern Japan have been bombarding a variety of mushrooms in lab-based garden plots with artificially induced...

The first Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] F-35B Lightning II short takeoff, vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter demonstrated the capability to hover today during a test flight at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The flight was a significant test mission leading up to the aircraft’s first vertical landing. It confirmed predictions of the jet’s vertical thrust, stability and control in hovering flight. Today’s flight began with a conventional takeoff before F-35 lead STOVL Pilot Graham Tomlinson initiated conversion to STOVL mode at 200 knots airspeed. He then slowed the aircraft to 60 knots and flew a decelerating approach to a...

AN AIRCRAFT that crashed minutes after taking off in a thunderstorm, killing all 90 people on board, is thought to have been struck by lightning. The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 had just left Beirut in Lebanon for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa when it burst into a "ball of fire" and plunged into the Mediterranean. There were two Britons among the 83 passengers on board. One of them was named as haulage firm owner Afif Krisht, 56, who had dual British-Lebanese nationality, and whose former wife lives in Plymouth. Flight ET-409 crashed into the sea two miles offshore. It disappeared...

BEIRUT, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Rescue workers have located the crash site of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that went down just off the Lebanese coast on Monday, Lebanon's Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said. "(The crash) site has been identified three-and-a-half km (two miles) west of the (coastal) village of Na'ameh," Aridi told reporters at Beirut international airport. He said search and rescue operations were under way but refused to give any further details. He also said it was too early to say what caused the crash but confirmed the plane took off from Beirut international airport in stormy weather

VARIOUS SIZES HERE

Fermi telescope finds evidence that positrons, not just electrons, are in storms on EarthWashington — Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system for gamma rays, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has also picked up a shocking vibe from Earth. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s forthcoming autobiography has been at the top of the Amazon book charts for weeks, and it hasn’t even been released yet. At least in the eyes of the political Left, she is now perhaps America’s most visible national Republican. But new Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds Palin losing handily in face-to-face march-ups with her two likeliest challengers for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Among likely Republican primary voters, Palin now trails former Arkansas governor-turned-Fox-TV-host Mike Huckabee by 20 points – 55% to 35%. When her opponent is ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Palin loses by...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. A freak bolt of lightning struck a 56-year-old cyclist in Englewood, Colo., even though no electrical storms were reported in the area, authorities say. Perry Schellpfeffer, an Englewood police spokesman, told The Denver Post the unidentified victim was hit by the lightning Wednesday afternoon. His injuries were not considered life-threatening. "There were some clouds and it was thundering a little, but there wasn't any kind of lightning storm," Schellpfeffer said. Among U.S. states, Colorado tied Florida for the most deaths from lightning strikes in 2008, when each had four. In 2006, each state had eight lightning-related deaths, the...

A great explosion of purity is about to come , But "not" as before(as Katrina) ,something straight from my kingdom , The heavenlies are about to applaud , I AM The Lord behold I alone am God ! Yet for my children of my rod and staff , They shall rest in my bossom of Zion and laugh , For the Joy of The Lord is their strength , And these are my children of victiory that have gone the full length , Obedience to me has become their rod , My staff is their com(fort) for I AM their...

A great explosion is about to come , Destroying things not of my kingdom , Prophecies told about to unfold , Things new wiping out the old , The storehouses of God's lightning released , Disturbing things now resting in peace , Ancient walls suddenly cut down , Nothing left but burnt glass on the ground , As paper mache burnt and blown away , A prophecy of the past happening in one day , A blink of the eye and nothing left to see , Yet all the nations witnessing God's majesty , A turning point in a war...

<p>I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend.</p> <p>I made a first post in the general section yesterday and would like to see what sort of opinions I can find here amongst those who perhaps have a more relogiously attuned perspective.</p>

Why are forum replies reviewed and posting delayed? Makes it kinda tough to carry on a conversation when it takes hours to communicate.

Lightning that shoots upward from clouds can be as powerful as the strongest bolts that strike the ground, according to researchers who caught the strange phenomenon on film. (Watch the video, slowed down to show how the lightning bolt moves.)