Lightning keeps hitting the church, and somebody's always up in the tower

They rang the bells again during the storm. We are short one bell ringer. — Parish priest, 1748

When a storm came in, somebody climbed the church tower and rang the bells, because bells were supposed to drive off lightning. One count from the 1700s found 386 towers hit and 103 bell ringers killed in 33 years. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin put a pointed iron rod on his house, and it worked right away. The churches took their time. St. Mark's in Venice, struck by lightning since 1388, got its rod in 1776. Faith is a fine thing. So is a rod.

Noted: the Empire State Building gets hit by lightning more than 20 times a year, and nobody rings a thing.

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Franklin was a careful man. When he put the rod on his own house in Philadelphia in September 1752, he hung two bells on it that rang when it was charged. He didn't climb any towers.

Then the rod got political. During the American war, King George III had the lightning conductors at Kew Palace fitted with round knobs instead of the sharp points Franklin recommended. Franklin was an American rebel by then. The president of the Royal Society, Sir John Pringle, wouldn't back the knobs and was pushed to resign. The story goes that he told the king a president's powers don't extend to changing the laws of nature.

The lightning didn't care who won the argument.