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Fort, Charles - The Book of the Damned - Falls of ‘cannon balls’
Identifier
015742
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort
Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.3-147,
a "thunderstone," "supposed to have fallen in Hampshire, Sept., 1852." It was an iron cannon ball, or it was a "large nodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret of iron." No one had seen it fall. It had been noticed, upon a garden path, for the first time, after a thunderstorm. It was only a "supposed" thing, because--"It had not the character of any known meteorite."
London Times, Sept. 16, 1852,
a letter from Mr. George E. Bailey, a chemist of Andover, Hants. He says that, in a very heavy thunderstorm, of the first week of September, 1852, this iron object, had fallen in the garden of Mr. Robert Dowling, of Andover; that it had fallen upon a path "within six yards of the house." It had been picked up "immediately" after the storm by Mrs. Dowling. It was about the size of a cricket ball: weight four pounds. No one had seen it fall. In the Times, Sept. 15, 1852, there is an account of this thunderstorm, which was of unusual violence.
The London Times, Feb. 1, 1888
it is said that a roundish object of iron had been found, "after a violent thunderstorm," in a garden at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a chemist, who could not identify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a product of workmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described as an oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The chemist's name and address are given: Mr. J. James Morgan: Ebbw Vale.
An "Iron cannon ball" was found in a manure heap, in Sussex, after a thunderstorm.
W.B. Tripp, F.R.M.S.
--that, during a thunderstorm, a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by something that was luminous. Dug. Bronze ‘ax’. Comment in Nature upon these objects: that they are "of an amusing character, thus clearly showing that they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character." Just why celestiality, or that of it which, too, is only of Intermediateness should not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning powers.
It may be noted that any old chunk of metal that, in contrast, measures up to the standard of "true meteoritic material" is admitted by the museums. In reading Fletcher's catalogue, for instance, we learn that some of the best-known meteorites were "found in draining a field"--"found in making a road"--"turned up by the plow" occurs a dozen times. Someone fishing in Lake Okeechobee, brought up an object in his fishing net. No meteorite had ever been seen to fall near it. The U.S. National Museum accepts it….. we see that in this inclusion-exclusion, as in every other means of forming an opinion, false inclusion and false exclusion have been practiced by curators of museums.
The source of the experience
Fort, CharlesConcepts, symbols and science items
Symbols
Science Items
Geomagnetic hot spotsGeomagnetic storms and space weather
Sun
Sun spot activity [high]