2 June: St Elmo

Today is the feast day of Saint Elmo (the one with the fire). 10 facts about him and his fire:

1. He was also known as Erasmus of Formia, and was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
2. He was a bishop in Italy at the time of Diocletian's persecution of Christians. He ran away and hid in the mountains for seven years, until an angel appeared to him and told him it was time to go home.
3. On the way, St Elmo encountered soldiers who tortured him and threw him in prison but an Angel helped him escape. During his journey he openly confessed to being a Christian and converted people. This soon came to the notice of the emperor, who became determined that St Elmo must die.
4. There were numerous attempts to kill him including putting him in a barrel full of spikes and rolling him downhill, but an angel healed him of those wounds. He was beaten and whipped, coated with pitch and set alight, and thrown into a dungeon where it was intended he'd starve to death, but an angel let him out. Finally, his abdomen was slit open and his intestines wound around a windlass. This was apparently beyond the capabilities even of an angel to heal, and he died.
5. He is patron of sailors, possibly because he was preaching one time when a thunderbolt struck the ground near him, and he simply carried on. Sailors, being in particular danger from sudden Lightning strikes, took this as a sign and adopted him as their patron.
6. He is also patron of Fort St. Elmo, (Malta), women in labour, and is invoked against colic in children, intestinal ailments and diseases and cattle pest.
7. So what is St Elmo's Fire, then? It's a weather phenomenon which happens when there is a strong electric charge in the atmosphere such as during a thunderstorm or a volcanic eruption. It's caused by luminous plasma and appears as a blue or violet glow, and tends to appear around tall, pointy structures like spires, chimneys and the masts of ships. It may also be seen on aircraft wings or nose cones. Sometimes it even appears around leaves and grass, and at the tips of cattle horns. It's often accompanied by a hissing or buzzing sound and may be a sign of an imminent lightning strike.
8. Some sailors attribute Saint Elmo's fire to other saints. Welsh sailors call it "candles of St David" and Russian sailor call them the lights of St Nicholas or St Peter. They were also sometimes called St. Helen's or St. Hermes' fire. It was usually interpreted by mariners as a good omen, and a sign St Elmo (or David or Nicholas or Peter) was protecting them. In the Philippines, however, the opposite is true. There, they call it santelmo and believe it is a sign of accidents or serious arguments. Shakespeare gave it a negative connotation in his play, The Tempest – evidence of the tempest inflicted by Ariel.
9. Some famous sailors in both fact and fiction have observed it. They include Charles Darwin, Ferdinand Magellan, Starbuck in Moby Dick, and Tintin. Jules Verne, in his novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth, describes the fire occurring while sailing during a subterranean electrical storm.
10. Then there's the 1985 film which was based around a bunch of friends who had recently graduated and were adjusting to life in the adult world. They used to meet in St Elmo's Bar, which gave its name to the movie despite the studio hating the name and angling to have it named something more mundane, like The Real World. The theme song St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) was written by John Parr and David Foster and was inspired by the story of athlete Rick Hansen—who was travelling the world in his wheelchair in his Man in Motion Tour to promote awareness of spinal cord injury. 

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