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thunderbolts.

info of them had their very clothes burned off their backs, as
Picture of the Day they stood there watching with tearful eyes the going down
February 6, 2006 of so many houses”. —James Goodsell's History of the Great
Chicago Fire, October 8, 9, and 10, Published 1871 by J.H. and
C.M. Goodsell.
part 1
Sunday evening, October 8, 1871 marked the beginning
The Comet and of one of the most devastating fires in U.S. history. Legend

the Chicago Fire has it that “The Great Chicago Fire” resulted from an agi-
tated cow kicking over a lantern in “Mrs O’Leary’s barn”.
For nearly one and a half cen-
turies, the cause of the most
notorious fire in U.S. history
has been a source of “heated”
controversy. Some research-
ers suggest that a disintegrat-
ing comet ignited the blaze.
But the electrical theorists
say that evidence most often
ignored offers the best clues.

“Wwind,
ith the heat increased the
which came howl-
ing across the prairie, until at last
there arose a perfect hurricane.
Mighty flakes of fire, hot cinders,
black, stifling smoke, were driven
fiercely at the people, and amid
the terrible excitement hundreds

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY The Comet and the Great Chicago Fire 2

The dry leaves and parched wood of Illinois in early au- threatened the agricultural college. In Thumb, farmers
tumn were the perfect kindling for a wildfire, and the fire fled an inferno that some newspapers dubbed, “The Fiery
spread with extraordinary rapidity, consuming homes and Fiend.” Reports say that fires threatened Muskegon, South
buildings, leaping from rooftop to rooftop with the speed Haven, Grand Rapids, Wayland, reaching the outskirts
of a locomotive. Between October 8 and 10, an estimated of Big Rapids. A steamship passing the Manitou Islands
350 people perished. The fire destroyed the homes of up reported they were on fire.
to one-third of the city's population, about 1,600 stores, 60 There can be no doubt that weather conditions at the
factories, and 28 public buildings. Four square miles of the time favored wildfires. But never before, and never since,
city burned to the ground. has the U.S. seen such wildly destructive simultaneous
Contrary to popular folklore, the Chicago fire is not the conflagrations. This “coincidence”, combined with many
worst in U.S. history. It was not even the worst to occur unusual phenomena reported by eyewitnesses, has led
on October 8 that year. The same evening—in fact, at the some to conclude that an extraordinary force, one not of
same time, about 9:30—a fierce wildfire struck in Peshtigo, the earth, was a more likely “arson” than either a misbe-
Wisconsin, over 200 miles to the north of Chicago, destroy- having cow or a regional drought.
ing the town and a dozen other villages. Estimates of those In 1883, Ignatius Donnelly, author of Ragnarok: the
killed range upward from 1200 to 2500 in a single night. It Rain of Fire and Gravel, suggested that in early historic
was not the Chicago fire but the simultaneous “Peshtigo times our Earth suffered great catastrophes from cometary
Fire” that was the deadliest in U.S. history. intruders. To this claim he added: “There is reason to be-
And there is more. On the same evening, across Lake lieve that the present generation has passed through the
Michigan, another fire also wreaked havoc. Though smaller gaseous prolongation of a comet's tail, and that hundreds
fires had been burning for some time—not unusual under of human beings lost their lives”. He was referring to the
the reported conditions—the most intense outburst ap- conflagration of 1871.
pears to have erupted simultaneously with the Chicago Is there plausible evidence that a comet may have
and Peshtigo fires. The blaze is said to have then burned caused the Chicago fire and its regional counterparts? In
for over a month, consuming over 2,000,000 acres and 1985, Mel Waskin, who had earlier discovered Donnelly’s
killing at least 200. work, published a book, Mrs. O’Leary’s Comet, suggest-
Concerning the Michigan outburst, it is reported that ing that a comet did indeed spark the October 8th fires.
numerous fires endangered towns across the state. The More recently, Robert Wood, a physicist and aeronautical
city of Holland was destroyed by fire and in Lansing flames engineer formerly with Douglas Aircraft and McDonnell

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Where was Comet Biela? 3

Douglas, gained attention from the Discovery Channel and virtually disappeared. They have disappeared because
other media for proposing the same idea. they are not meaningful to minds conditioned by popular
The proponents of the cometary explanation cite many ideas about how the “Chicago fire” started and what is
fascinating details confirmed by eye witness reports: the “scientifically” possible. Within these habits of perception,
descent of fire from the heavens, a great “tornado” of fire the most important evidence will often go unnoticed or
rushing across the landscape and tearing buildings from unremembered.
their foundations, descending balls of fire, a rain of red
dust, great explosions of wind accompanied by blasts of
part 2
thunder, buildings exploding into flame where no fire was
burning, and a good deal more. Some of the parallels with Where was Comet Biela?
the later Tunguska event are impossible to miss.
It seems that the records of the conflagration hold A strange thing happened to comet Biela in 1845. The
many clues that are almost never mentioned in scientific nucleus of the comet split into two partners. The
discussion of the Chicago fire. Over time the clues have “smaller” comet (lower left in the picture), subse-
quently became more active and brighter than the
larger. And that was only the beginning.

I n 1883, twelve years after the Chicago fire, Ignatius Don-


nelly published a widely read book, Ragnarok: the Rain of
Fire and Gravel. Though the book dealt primarily with the
evidence for cometary disasters in ancient times, Donnelly
suggested that the Chicago fire provided a small glimpse
of the terror experienced by our earlier ancestors. “There
is reason to believe that the present generation has passed
through the gaseous prolongation of a comet's tail, and that
hundreds of human beings lost their lives”.
Reflecting on the simultaneous events around Lake
Michigan on the evening of October 8, 1871, Donnelly posed
Drawing of the split comet Biela, from Amedee Guillemin's The Heavens the underlying mystery: “At that hour, half past nine o'clock

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Where was Comet Biela? 4

in the evening, at apparently the same moment, at points proach to the Sun), astronomers were surprised to see that
hundreds of kilometers apart, in three different states, the head of the comet had acquired a faint satellite. It had
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the most peculiar split in two, something we now know to be fairly common
and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spon- for comets, but still mysterious to cometologists. In 1845,
taneous combustion”. (We take up the historic testimony the event seemed unprecedented. As noted by Carl Sagan
cited by Donnelly and others in Part 3). and Nancy Druyan in their book, Comet, “the finding was
Donnelly believed he could identify the cause of the so bizarre that the first astronomer to note this twinning
devastation. He said it was Comet Biela, a comet that cap- dismissed it as some internal reflection in his telescope”.
tured attention from astronomers in 1826, returned for a In Robert Chapman’s and John Brandt’s The Comet
few predictable visits, broke into two nuclei, and then Book certain details of Biela’s return are fascinating. The
disappeared. discovery of a partner occurred on January 13, 1846, when
The comet was named after Austrian officer W. von “a faint satellite comet was observed a small distance from
Biela, who observed the body in February 1826. By following the main comet”. Two tails were seen parallel to each
the path of Biela, the French astronomer Marie-Charles- other. “Over the next month the fainter of the two comets
Théodore de Damoiseau estimated the time of its return. increased in brightness and finally became brighter than
He said the comet would cross the orbit of the Earth about the ‘main’ comet. The situation then reversed and the main
one month ahead of our planet’s arrival at the same spot. comet became the brighter one again. In addition, the main
Donnelly does not mention that ten days after Biela’s comet grew a second tail and a luminous bridge of mate-
announcement, a French astronomer John Felix Adolphe rial joined the two comets” [emphasis ours]. At this time
Gambart also sighted the comet. Both Biela and Gambert the two nuclei were apart an estimated 250,000 kilometers,
calculated the orbit, recognizing that earlier comet appari- about two thirds of the distance separating Earth and the
tions in 1772 and 1805 were the same object that appeared Moon.
in 1826. And Gambert, along with other astronomers, pre- Donnelly’s account at this point diverges from the his-
dicted that the comet would strike the earth on its return, tory told by Chapman and Brandt. As Donnelly tells it, “In
which he projected for October 29, 1832. 1852, 1859, and 1866, the comet should have returned, but it
Damoiseau’s prediction was correct. Earth missed the did not”. But Chapman and Brandt—prominent figures at
comet by about a month. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center at the time of their
On its anticipated 1846 return, Biela was first sighted book’s publication—say that the twin comet-heads did
in late 1845 as it moved toward perihelion (its closest ap- indeed appear at the appointed time in 1852. This reappear-

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Where was Comet Biela? 5

ance is, in fact, well documented. And one detail in Chap- mers do not hesitate to connect the shower to Biela. Each
man’s and Brandt’s account rarely shows up in standard year the Earth passes through the remains of the comet, but
discussions of cometology: with widely varying consequences. And the effect today is
“…Both comets returned at the predicted time, though trivial by comparison with the November 1872 occurrence.
they were over 2 million kilometers apart [emphasis ours]. Today the shower peaks around mid-November, averaging
Once again the two comets took turns as the brighter of the less than three meteors per hour—hardly deserving the
pair. On at least one occasion a bright jet was seen between title “shower”. On the night of November 27, 1872, however,
the two heads” [emphasis ours]. records show several thousand meteors per hour—a direct
Though Sagan and Druyan report the splitting of Biela, and obvious link to the disintegration of the comet.
they do not mention the jet, an event for which the standard It remains to be asked, then, whether the fragmenta-
view of comets has no theoretical reference. tion of Biela, a comet on a path intersecting the orbit of
The rest of Donnelly’s discussion of Biela is in general the Earth, and predicted by some astronomers to collide
agreement with the summary by Chapman and Brandt. with the Earth in 1832, might have been the source of the
Amazingly, and with the aid of a startling and unpredicted “great conflagration” in 1871. The comet had split at least 25
meteor shower on November 27, 1872, Professor W. Klinker- years earlier (the 1846 appearance), and the two partners
fues of Berlin, calculated the trajectories of the meteoric had separated by more than 2 million kilometers by 1852.
falls, concluding that they were the remains of the comet. So whether or not Klinkerfues observed Biela after the
This, in turn led him to send instructions to Norman Pog- spectacular shower of November 1872, we know he did not
son, Government Astronomer at the Madras Observatory report seeing two bodies. Hence, at least one of the partners
in India (far enough south to allow a good view). Pogson’s intersecting Earth’s path had presumably already disinte-
answer to Klinkerfues, dated December 6, said he “found grated entirely, leaving the possibility that on a subsequent
Biela immediately” on the first clearing of the sky, and on orbit the Earth moved into debris left by the body.
the second day he saw it again. It showed no tail, he said. The facts on the Andromedids, including their erratic
As Chapman and Brandt put it, this was either an “in- occurrence over the years and the obvious dispersal and
credible coincidence”, or it was the actual last view of the depletion of the cometary debris over a century and a half,
comet. cannot give us a definitive answer to Donnelly’s views on
The spectacular meteor shower that inspired Klinker- Biela. But as for plausibility, the answer is definitive. Many
fues to identify it with Biela has long since become an an- facts are consistent with the interpretation, and there are
nual event—sort of—called the Andromedids. And astrono- no facts that exclude the interpretation.

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 6

Of course, it is not necessary to identify an intruder, quential is gravity in the presence of the electric force, the
in order to see the evidence of an intrusion. No one ques- improbability disappears.
tions the exploding Tunguska comet, asteroid or meteor In fact, the jet is a clue more vital by far than the popu-
on the basis that astronomers cannot identify the incom- lar “scientific” commentary on Donnelly’s hypothesis. By
ing object. directing our attention to the electrical nature of comets, it
But of all the scientific details about comet Biela, per- also invites us to look again at the historic testimony, with
haps none stands out more dramatically than the fact al- an eye to details long unnoticed or forgotten.
most never mentioned—a jet forming between the two
nuclear fragments when they were 2 million kilometers
apart. In the purely gravitational and mechanical terms part 3
that astronomers have sought to apply to comets, this jet
is inconceivable. But when we remember how inconse- Human Testimony
Reconsidered
All investigators of the Chicago fire and its devastating
regional counterparts rely on human testimony. But
how should we view such testimony when it suggests
things that are not currently believed? Good science
will not ignore witnesses when, in unison, they sug-
gest new lines of investigation.

O n the evening of October 8, 1871 devastating fires


erupted at virtually the same moment in three dif-
ferent states in the region of the Great Lakes—Wisconsin,
Illinois, and Michigan. The outbursts included the notori-
ous “Chicago fire”, but also an even more devastating fire
in Wisconsin, the worst in U.S. history, covering some
400 square miles. At the same time, wildfires also erupted
Chicago: corner of Dearborn and Monroe after the devastating fire across much of Michigan. In his book Ragnarok: the Age

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 7

of Fire and Gravel, published in 1883, Ignatius Donnelly they had seen nothing like this before. “They could give
proposed that the simultaneous outbursts were no co- no other interpretation to this ominous roar, this bursting
incidence; they were the effect of our Earth meeting up of the sky with flame, and this dropping down of fire out
with a fragment, or fragments, of comet Biela, a body that of the very heavens, consuming instantly everything it
had disintegrated a few years earlier while on an Earth- touched”.
threatening path. Donnelly continues quoting from Sheahan and Upton:
As Donnelly reports it, in the Wisconsin fire near Lake “No two give a like description of the great tornado as it
Michigan, a large area including the town of Peshtigo and smote and devoured the village. It seemed as if ‘the fiery
several neighboring cities was “swept bare by an absolute fiends of hell had been loosened’, says one. ‘It came in great
whirlwind of flame”. His review of the event, based on sheeted flames from heaven’, says another. ‘There was a piti-
eyewitness accounts, was taken primarily from the book, less rain of fire and SAND. The atmosphere was all afire’.
History of the Great Conflagration, by James W. Sheahan and Some speak of ‘great balls of fire unrolling and shooting
George P. Upton (1871). It includes the following report: forth, in streams’. The fire leaped over roofs and trees, and
“At sundown there was a lull in the wind and compara- ignited whole streets at once”. [Emphasis ours]
tive stillness. For two hours there were no signs of danger; Donnelly notes that many of the victims were found
but at a few minutes after nine o’clock, and by a singular in open spaces with “no visible marks of fire nearby” and
coincidence, precisely the time at which the Chicago fire “not a trace of burning upon their bodies or clothing”. Many
commenced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar. were found huddled together “in what were evidently re-
It was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. In- garded at the moment as the safest places, far away from
stantly the heavens were illuminated with a terrible glare. buildings, trees, or other inflammable material, and there
The sky, which had been so dark a moment before, burst into to have died together”.
clouds of flame. A spectator of the terrible scene says the One clue, perhaps, is the mention of electrical phe-
fire did not come upon them gradually from burning trees nomena:
and other objects to the windward, but the first notice they “Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires
had of it was a whirlwind of flame in great clouds from above which destroyed Peshtigo, Menekaune, Williamsonville,
the tops of the trees, which fell upon and entirely enveloped etc., but all that has been said can give the stranger but
everything”. [Emphasis ours] a faint conception of the reality. The heat has been com-
For many of the witnesses it seemed as if the biblical pared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on an
“last days” had come. Though well accustomed to wildfires, object by a blow-pipe; but even that would not account

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 8

for some of the phenomena. For instance, we have in our furnace. No kind of material could stand its breath for a
possession a copper cent taken from the pocket of a dead moment.”
man in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which will illustrate our Another quote from Sheahan & Upton's Work: “The
point. This cent has been partially fused, but still retains huge stone and brick structures melted before the fierce-
its round form, and the inscription upon it is legible. Oth- ness of the flames as a snow-flake melts and disappears in
ers, in the same pocket, were partially melted, and yet the water, and almost as quickly. Six-story buildings would
clothing and the body of the man were not even singed. We take fire and disappear for ever from sight in five minutes
do not know in what way to account for this, unless, as is by the watch. . . . The fire also doubled on its track at the
asserted by some, the tornado and fire were accompanied great Union Depot and burned half a mile southward in the
by electrical phenomena”. very teeth of the gale—a gale which blew a perfect tornado,
It seems the idea that Mrs. O’Leary's cow triggered the and in which no vessel could have lived on the lake. . . .
conflagration in Chicago did not withstand investigation. Strange, fantastic fires of blue, red, and green played along
Speaking of O’Leary's barn, the fire marshal testified: “We the cornices of buildings”.
got the fire under control, and it would not have gone a Some additional detail and comments of interest appear
foot farther; but the next thing I knew they came and told in Mel Waskin’s more recent book, Mrs. O’Leary’s Comet
me that St. Paul’s church, about two squares north, was on (1985). Speaking of the Peshtigo outburst, he writes—
fire”. They then checked the church-fire, but—“The next “Accompanying the firestorm and the wind was a rain
thing I knew the fire was in Bateham’s planing-mill”. of red hot sand. It was not clear to those eyewitnesses who
A writer in the New York “Evening Post” says he saw survived their ordeal where this sand came from. It must
“buildings far beyond the line of fire, and in no contact with have been raised from the earth by the incredible winds,
it, burst into flames from the interior”. but from where? There was sand on the beaches, but the
To these references, Donnelly adds a quote from The beaches lay to the east, and the wind was blowing from
Annual Record of Science and Industry for 1876, page 84: the west and the south. There was no sand on the floor of
“The flames that consumed a great part of Chicago the forest nor on the farmlands of Wisconsin”.
were of an unusual character and produced extraordinary Waskin also mentions incredible “balloons of fire" re-
effects. They absolutely melted the hardest building-stone, ported by many people, including one family that lived
which had previously been considered fire-proof. Iron, between Peshtigo and Green Bay. “The onslaught was so
glass, granite, were fused and run together into grotesque sudden that the family could only run to the center of an
conglomerates, as if they had been put through a blast- immense clearing on their farm where nothing combustible

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 9

stood. They hoped to be safe, several hundreds yards from by the Oconto County Web Project, which discusses the
structures or trees. comet hypothesis as a “plausible” theory—
“When the fire came, rushing on all sides of them, it did “Weather historians, using archives as a baseline, and
not in fact touch them. But eyewitnesses saw them die. A adding information from recent decades, now offer a plau-
great balloon of fire dropped on them – father, mother, and sible theory. Meteor showers in Autumn are common in
four children. They were incinerated in an instant. Almost the upper great lakes. In recent years these showers have
nothing was left of them”. left burning chunks scattered over the entire region, some
“Many survivors described these great balls of fire fall- large enough to break through the roofs of homes and out
ing from the sky. The whole sky was filled with them; round buildings, starting fires in dry fields and wooded areas. With
smoky masses about the size of a large balloon, traveling the tinder dry conditions present throughout the entire re-
at unbelievable speed. They fell to the ground and burst". gion on the night of October 8, 1871, such a meteor shower
Waskin says that a brilliant blaze of fire erupted from the would easily have started what seemed like spontaneous
balloons as they landed, instantly consuming everything fires in numerous places of Wisconsin, Michigan (upper
they touched. and lower), and Illinois (the Great Chicago Fire). With the
Also noteworthy were the reports that the flames continuous thick smoke from smoldering smaller blazes al-
erupted from the basements of the stores when there was ready blanketing the land, and the unusually hot weather of
“no sign of fire in any other part of the building”. And the that time making residents seek shelter inside their homes
basement fires burned with a strange light, “as if whisky early in the evening, the meteors that entered the Earth’s
or alcohol were burning”. atmosphere could not easily be seen. This certainly would
As something of a footnote to this article, we note a account for the sudden eruption of numerous blazes over
contemporary report claiming that “The first (and most the vast area at exactly the same time.”
startling) piece of evidence is the recent discovery of a Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine the “cometary” ex-
26.5-kilogram carbonaceous chondrite meteorite on the planation ever receiving the attention it deserves until
shores of Lake Huron—‘ground zero’ of the astral bom- those addressing the question familiarize themselves with
bardment. This report, by Ken Riell, whose claims follow the electric comet model. As we have already emphasized,
the work of Donnelly and Waskin, suggests the meteor without this deliberate reconsideration of the underlying
is of the same composition as the incoming object in the question—what is a comet?— the investigator will either
Tunguska event in Siberia—1908. ignore or forget the most telling clues. In the above reports,
Also of interest is a presentation on the Peshtigo fire for example, consider the following:

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 10

mable gases and electric discharge phenomena—a ‘biblical’


Whirlwind of flame or “perfect tornado” rain of fire and sand.
Tornadoes are a slow electric discharge phenomenon. The
ionized trails of cometary debris, descending through the Descending “balloons” of fire
ionosphere to the lower atmosphere, produces “lightning It is well established that comets discharge carbon com-
conductors” to allow various forms of “megalightning” pounds that would be flammable in the Earth’s oxygen
to descend to the ground. One of the manifestations of a atmosphere. Gaseous balls of fire would combine with
powerful direct discharge between the ionosphere and various weird manifestations of megalightning, reaching
the Earth could well be a tornado, in which the usual swift through the meteoric shower of dust to the ionosphere, al-
lightning strike is replaced by a slower discharge. Power- most 100 kilometres above the Earth. The spectacle would
ful electromagnetic forces generate a devastating “charge be beyond normal experience. In addition, near the Earth,
sheath vortex” that slows the discharge while spreading ball lightning could be expected, given the extreme electri-
the devastation on Earth. cal conditions—and the presence of ball lightning is surely
the plausible explanation for descending “balloons” with
Fire descending from the sky the power to incinerate objects they strike.
As in the Tunguska event, the appearance of fireballs or
electrically discharging debris, along with associated light- Buildings exploding with fire when no fire was yet
ning manifestations from a clear sky, would be expected present
as an external body penetrated Earth’s plasma sheath. Electrical discharges would take place between metal ob-
jects inside buildings, igniting any flammable materials.
Rain of fire and sand The same would hold true for the hapless man found with
An electrically charged fragment of a comet nucleus will melted coins in his pocket but clothes intact and no other
undergo explosive electrical fragmentation before reach- signs of burning. There is, in fact, no other natural expla-
ing the Earth's atmosphere. The electrical model of comets nation for this enigma.
envisions these bodies being formed by the same processes
that created asteroids. Most, if not all, are as rocky as aster- Colorful flames running along cornices of buildings
oids. The result of their fragmentation will be a meteoric This is the usual description of a glow discharge from sharp
shower of granulated silicates, or sand, mixed with flam- edges of rooftops, seen in the midst of powerful electrical

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Human Testimony Reconsidered 11

storms. It is called “St. Elmo's fire”. The different colors


of the flames are due to the metallic ions sputtered from
the surface material.

Fusing of fire-proof building material


Plasma discharges can be used to melt anything. Industri-
ally, plasma torches are used to destroy the most refractory
materials.

Basements exploding
I VITY
CT
“…the basement fires burned with a strange light, “as if

A
whisky or alcohol were burning”. Whisky or alcohol burns 3 THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE

with a ghostly blue light. Similarly, electrical glow dis-


charges from grounded metallic objects or electrical wir-
ing in the basements of buildings would emit a flickering,
eerie blue light. Any trapped flammable gases formed in
the basements would be ignited by the discharge, resulting

<
in explosions.

Our purpose here is not to suggest a definitive answer to


the “Great Conflagration”. But the cost of ignoring evi-
dence should be obvious. The moment one entertains the
electrical vantage point, if only to compare the explanatory
power of alternative views, the most incongruous elements
of the story become predictable features. And who could
deny that this ability to resolve paradoxes is the mark of
Items fused together in the Great Chicago Fire - top: glass marbles;
a hypothesis that deserves consideration? bottom: iron nails. Chicago Historical Society

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