ODDLY ENOUGH | Man in Pennsylvania survives lightning strike at campsite

ODDLY ENOUGH

Man in Pennsylvania survives lightning strike at campsite

INDUSTRY, Pa.

Police say a Pennsylvania man has survived a lighting strike while helping set up tents for a Boy Scout outing.

Police in the town of Industry say the 49-year-old man was standing by a tree when he was struck by a bolt of lightning about 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

Industry officer Aaron Lopez says the man and others were moving Scouts and camping supplies off the site as a thunderstorm approached.

Lopez says no children were nearby when the man was struck.

The man was up and walking around when police arrived, though he was treated later at a hospital for a wound where the lightning bolt apparently exited his body.

Police are not identifying the man.

Phil Campbell Convention to spotlight Ala. town’s disaster

PHIL CAMPBELL, Ala.

The Phil Campbell Convention, which honors people who share the name of the only incorporated town in Alabama with a first and last name, has a new purpose this year after tornadoes raked the state.

A tornado destroyed much of Phil Campbell and killed 26 last month. The convention will call attention to the disaster, and the group has launched an “I’m With Phil” campaign.

The convention started in 1995 and has 190 Facebook members.

Organizers say Phil Campbells from as far away as Australia say they’ll attend this year’s convention June 17-18. Phil Campbell of Fayetteville, Ga., already has helped clear debris from a home so the owners could start repairs.

The town is named for an Englishman who built a railroad depot in the area in the 1880s.

New home for Ohio man’s pencil-sharpener ‘museum’

LOGAN, Ohio

Tourism officials have made a point of displaying the hundreds of pencil sharpeners collected by an Ohio minister who died last summer.

The Rev. Paul Johnson had kept his collection in a small shed he called his museum, outside his home in Carbon Hill in southeast Ohio. A new home for his more than 3,400 sharpeners was dedicated last week inside a regional welcome center.

The Logan Daily News reports Johnson started collecting after his wife gave him a few pencil sharpeners as a gift in the late 1980s. He kept them organized in categories, including cats, Christmas and Disneyland. The oldest is 105 years old.

An Ohio Senate proclamation calls the new display “a fitting tribute” to Johnson, a World War II veteran.

Associated Press