On June 7, 1195, a fiery spinning ball emerged from a dark cloud in an erstwhile sunny sky close to the London lodgings of the bishop of Norwich. Witnesses could never have known that the natural phenomenon that they were seeing would defy scientific explanation for more than 800 years. For what they observed has all the hallmarks of ball lightning: an atmospheric effect, the origin of which remains hotly disputed.
An account of this extraordinary moment survives in a monastic chronicle compiled between about 1180 and 1199 by Gervase, a monk of Christ Church Cathedral in Canterbury. It would appear that this is the first credible written record of ball lightning in England, and much more convincing than an earlier European description. Previously the earliest record of a sighting was believed to be from the 17th century.
