Esther Williams, the famed swimmer/actress, said a lifetime of aquatic exercise “made me very strong. Not as strong as a

football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.”  But when it comes to damage, she was a piker next to the Irish King

Maelsechlainn II who ruled and inflicted a lot of damage from the time he was crowned in 979 at age 30 until his death 43 years

later.  He is mentioned only by name in one of Patrick O’Brian’s magnificent novels that I’m re-reading and in a brief description

in one of the O’Brian reference books: Anthony Brown’s “Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon in the Aubrey-Maturin Sea Novels

of Patrick O’Brian.”  O’Brian littered his plots with small historical asides without amplification that induce additional research.  

Known as “easter eggs,” they’re defined by the American heritage Dictionory as “a hidden message or feature, as in a video game

or DVD.”  That’s how O’Brian has led me to dig a bit to learn about strange and wonderful things like Jeremy Bentham’s

whipping machine and Edmond (“the comet”) Halley’s wooden diving bell.  “Maelsechlainn the Wise was a notably damaging

fellow, especially to Danish immigrants to Ireland.  Danes lived in and around Dublin, so Maelsechlainn sacked that town and

enslaved the Danes at least six times, as well as other Danish settlements.  He warred almost nonstop with other Irish and looted at

 

            Some damage can be good, even to a church, as described in “Damaged Church Floor May Have Revealed the Grave of

the Fourth Musketeer,” an Arstechnica.com article by Kiona Smith.  D’Artagnan, the fourth swordsman in Alexandre Dumas’

“The Three Musketeers” was based on Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Count d’Artagnan, who King Louis XIV appointed

Captain-Lieutenant of the King’s Musketeers in 1667.  Six years later d’Artagnan was killed by a musket ball to his throat while

leading an assault against the Protestant Dutch city of Maastricht, and officers of his standing were usually buried in nearby

churches.  The closest to the French camp was Saint Peter and Paul, and though rumors of d’Artagnan’s burial under the floor

were long rampant, the clergy refused to dig up the church’s tile floor until it began buckling due to subsidence last January.

  Repairs began in March, and a body was found with musket ball fragments in it along with a gold coin from 1660.  Its DNA is

being tested, but archeologists are “90 percent sure” it is the namesake of the fourth musketeer.

            Few events damage gardens more than hailstorms.   According to NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, “Hailstones 

Hailstones then grow by colliding with liquid water drops that freeze onto the hailstone’s surface. The hail falls when the

thunderstorm’s updraft can no longer support the weight of the hailstone.”  They added that a large one (2-4 inches) will fall

between 44 and 72 mph, and really big ones (4-inches+) will hit over 100 mph.  If you’re keeping score at home, the biggest U.S.

hailstone fell in South Dakota in 2010 and had an 8-inch diameter, a circumference of 18.62 inches, and weighed almost 2 lbs. 

 Hail sizes ranges from pea (1/4-inch diameter) to golf ball (1 3/4 inches) to teacup (3- inches) to grapefruit (4.5inches) to gorilla

(over 6 inches).  The gorilla designation was coined by “extreme meteorologist” Reed Timmer who has regular updates and

warning about potentially damaging storm fronts on his Facebook page.  For instance, as I write there’s a region under gorilla hail

threat reaching from my old hometown of Abilene, Texas (where golf ball hail was common) up to Wichita, Kansas.  

“Scientists Find That Ice Generates Electricity When Bent,” a study published in Nature Physics last Fall, showed that ice “can

generate electricity when subjected to mechanical deformation,” because “ordinary ice is a flexoelectric material.  In other words,

it can generate electricity when subjected to mechanical deformation,” and “flexoelectricity could be one possible explanation for

the generation of the electric potential that leads to lightning during storms.” That’s why I’ve started looking into clouds more

intently in Tristan Gooley’s “The Secret World of Weather: How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, etc.” and visiting the Cloud

Appreciation Society (CAS) website.  The CAS Library not only features cloud-related music, art, videos and some rather shaky

poetry, the photo section has excellent shots of the usual main cloud types, but also includes “Optical Phenomena” where you’ll

find examples of noctilucent clouds (AKA “night shining clouds”) that consist of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, and

supernumerary bows (“repeating fringes of colors that can sometimes appear along the edge of a rainbow”).  Gorilla hail’s

destruction pales in comparison to that inflicted by humankind.  As columnist Jim Hightower wrote, “the Bible declares that on the

sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit.”