I was stopped at a stoplight, and lightning struck the hood of the car stopped next to me. So maybe… 15’ away from me. Not sure how to score that.
Also covered by Lena Lovich, Girls Aloud and an assortment of others. About once a decade a proper cover is released.
My house wasn’t directly hit, but the lightening ran through the phone lines, and fried a modem and a couple of phones attached to the landline.
My neighbors had a TV implode, and their burglar alarm was hit and failed in “on” mode. The people next to them had some damage, too.
My best guess is that the telephone pole across the street was hit. We were awakened by that bolt of lightening, and the accompanying boom.
I wasn’t sure how to vote, either, but went with “stone’s throw”. But maybe that counts as a hit to the house?
@Maus_Magill & @Cardigan
This option would cover your circumstances :-
I was within sight of someone or something when it was struck by lightning.
Tangentially - I spent the last two days restoring phone service to a small town in Texas after a lightning stick took out the switch.
That was fun.
I went with building. I was also in a plane struck by lightning.
Basically - avoid me during thunderstorms.
But they were both a lot closer than that.
On several occasions I’ve reached the shore and secured my boat just as a thunderstorm moved into the area. Once a lightning bolt hit a tree about 200 yards down river, scaring the crap out of me
While on its face correct, ‘within sight’ covers a whole lotta ground. Watching, say, the Empire State Building get struck while blocks away might technically be in the same category. However, feeling your vehicle buffeted by the shock wave of a strike 15 feet away carries a very different emotional impact.
I selected ‘in a house which was hit’ but the house itself wasn’t damaged. The strike ran through the electric lines and blew out everything that was turned on at the time.
I also once saw a strike hit the middle of an intersection while I was maybe 50 feet away on the sidewalk. But the poll wouldn’t let me choose two.
And I’m genuinely not sure what to say about Tokyo. I think I’m saying two syllables; but if I listen hard there’s a hint of a third one in there.
Deep Purple says three syllables. That’s good enough for me.
Lots of words get stretched out or cut short to fit into lyrics. “Tokyo” has always been two syllables for me; to make it three just seems unnecessary.
I don’t remember the 2017 eclipse being all that hyped, actually. I was much more aware of this one, maybe because this area was in the path of totality (which was totally awesome, BTW). We were able to see it from our NE Ohio backyard and had a great time. I’m sorry so many people had traffic problems elsewhere.
I never particularly liked the Eurythmics song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” but I’ve heard it a million times on the radio. Marilyn Manson’s version has the virtues of both novelty and creepiness, so it got my vote.
There are very few English words that end in a consonant or consonant cluster followed by “yo”. The only one I can find is “embryo”, in which the “-bryo” is pronounced as two syllables (bree-yo). So it’s not surprising that many English speakers will pronounce Tokyo as toe-kee-yo. The Cambridge Dictionary gives the three syllable version as the only English pronunciation.
Gawd, I love that album. I gave it as a gift, as well, to a schoolteacher friend of mine. He loved it, too.
I couldn’t answer the lightning poll, because I’ve seen lightning, but never very close. And I’ve never seen someone hit by it.
Tokyo is two syllables. If you know Russian, it’s kinda like the palatalized portions of words. Also, the “su” portion of Japanese words almost always has only the “s” pronounced. Like sukiyaki is pronounced skeeyaki.
I’ve only just started learning Japanese in Duolingo, so take what I say with a grain of salt. My understanding is that when they are at the end of a word or surrounded by unvoiced consonants, the vowel sounds /i/ and /u/ are silent. Unvoiced consonants include include /s/, /k/, and /t/ Hence, in the name of the city Yokosuka and です (the verb “be”, transcribed desu) the /u/ is silent.
So “yoh koh skah” then, right?
I know very little about Japanese, but I had understood that /i/ and /u/ between unvoiced consonants are not silent, but rather unvoiced. The vowels are still pronounced, but without voice (that is, without the larynx vibrating, like how /f/ is an unvoiced /v/). Unvoiced vowels do not normally occur in English, so it can be difficult for English speakers to hear what’s happening.
We have a Ukrainian rescue cat named Ксюша (Ksyusha). It’s properly pronounced “ksyoo-sha” but I like to annoy my partner by calling her “kuh-suh-yoo-sha”. (That is, that’s what I call the cat, not my partner. I have all sorts of other names I call my partner to annoy her. 
)
About 20 years ago, I was on an airliner that was hit by lightning while in flight. There was a very bright flash, the plane shuddered, and my skin felt tingly for a few moments.
I pronounce Tokyo as (roughly) TOE-kih-yoh; the middle syllable is kind of subtle. I picked “three” in the poll, because it’s clearly not two, but it’s not entirely three, either.