Talk:St. Elmo's fire
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The link to Helena leads to a disambiguation page where no option makes sense in this context. I strongly suspect that this Helena is none other than Helen of Troy who, after all, was supposed to be sister to Castor and Pollux. But I do not know it for sure (I would have fixed it otherwise myself). --eiaccb 10:10, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Who is Saint Telmo?
Are you sure that St Elmo is Erasmus of Formiae and not Pedro González Telmo (or Pedro Telmo), also a patron of mariners?
[edit] Corpusants?
- "References to St. Elmo's Fire, often known as "corposants" or "corpusants" from the Spanish Cuerpos Santos (Holy Bodies), can be found in the works of Julius Caesar, Pliny the Elder, Herman Melville, and Antonio Pigafetta's journal of his voyage with Ferdinand Magellan."
I haven't checked the sources mentioned, but if the term "corpusants" appears in works of Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder, the claim that the term comes from Spanish is a rather misleading half-truth. There was no such thing as Spanish back then. It doesn't seem impossible to me that the term dates back that early, but the origin would be Latin (corpus sanctus?) rather than Spanish. EldKatt 19:06, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Hi. I wrote the Latin Wikipedia stub on St. Elmo's Fire. (It's corpus sanctum btw; "corpus" is neuter.) It seems that there is a confusion in the reading of the sentence you quoted. There are certainly references to St. Elmo's Fire in Pliny, but not under the name "corpus sanctum" (nor "St. Elmo's fire", of course). He describes them under the Greek names mentioned in the English article: Helena, and Castor and Pollux. I'm not sure I remember if I read about it in Caesar. The Romans don't seem to have had an overarching term for the phenomenon in general—at least, I wasn't able to find one. —Muke Tever 04:40, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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- Thanks for the nice info. Anyhow, upon more careful reading, it's rather obvious that the passage does not at all state that the Latin sources used "corpusants". My comment thus falls flatly to the ground. Still, though, it got me fooled once... EldKatt 21:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] St. Elmo's fire in film
The 1970s film Hindenburg portrayed St. Elmo's fire racing around the lounge of that airship as it passed through a cloud, to the dismay of some passengers, who feared explosion. Elmos fires may occure on common household products such as cats,dog,and other household pets.
[edit] Where is St. Elmo's fire seen?
My professor once saw it while he was in the cockpit of a FedEx plane. He said it came up from the nose of the plane, over the windshield. It should maybe be added to the list of possible places where it is seen in addition to cattle horns and ship masts. Yoink23 01:01, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
St. Elmo's fire was witnessed on one of the B-29 bombers en-route to Nagasaki. It was the atomic bomb mission, but not the plane carrying the bomb. raptor 12:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Incorrect quotation method
"Everything was in flames, the sky with lightning, the water with luminous particles (bioluminescence), and even the very masts were pointed with a blue flame."
"Bioluminescence" is not - as it might occur to a common reader - part of the quotation but an addition. What's your opinion: a) Delete it or b) put it into a form with no room for misinterpretation? Walter Schulz (unregistered) 13:07, 19 January 2006 (CET)
- I put it in square brackets, using the nowiki thingies. There's got to be a more elegant way, but it works. --Allen 02:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)1281 was the first accourence of such
[edit] Picture
Any chance the picture could be replaced by a photo?
I agree. Here are some results from Google:
http://inflightphotos.com/st-elmos-fire.html
http://www.jpgloverart.com/Pages/PhenomenPagesFolder/StElmoBlue.html
http://www.jpgloverart.com/Pages/PhenomenPagesFolder/StElmoI.html
[edit] Contact
Just to clarify, you can touch St. Elmo's Fire right?--68.88.232.113 01:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "References in Popular Culture"
What a ridiculous, listcrufty, fancrufty section: I removed it. It serves absolutely no purpose unless you are of a very odd trainspotter mentality. Gsd2000 00:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
