SENSES RESTORED

• After an operation, specialists told Mrs Mary Lyons of Chester, West Virginia, that she would never be able to speak again. Four years later, terrified by a tightrope walker at a circus, the 32-year-old screamed and thereafter was able to talk. [AP] NY Times, 18 July 1927.

• A stone thrown up by a horse’s hoof in 1897 blinded Stephen McCormack in his right eye. Thirty-three years later, Mr McCormack, by that time manager of the Griffith Fruit Company in Sydney, Australia, was exercising with a medicine ball when a companion accidentally poked a finger in his blind eye. He developed an excruciating headache, and suddenly his sight returned. [AP] NY Times, 9 July 1930.

• When her house in Canaan, Connecticut, was struck by lightning in

1911, Mrs Jane

Decker, 65, recovered her hearing after being deaf since childhood. The bolt entered the roof near the chimney, shattered a number of rafters, tore through two floors, wrecking windows and frames, and stunning both Mrs Fred Stevens and her mother, Mrs Decker, who were standing close together.

NY Times, 16 July 1911.

• An air raid alarm in Hanover in August 1940 sent people scurrying to the cellars. While being led out of a room, a man who had been blind for years tripped and fell, striking his head against a bedpost. Waking the next morning, his discovered that vision had been restored in his right eye. NY Times, 20 Aug 1940.