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The Book of the Damned – Charles Fort

Nature, 7-112:

That, according to a correspondent to the Birmingham Morning News, the people living near King's Sutton, Banbury, saw, about one o'clock, Dec. 7, 1872, something like a haycock hurtling through the air. Like a meteor it was accompanied by fire and a dense smoke and made a noise like that of a railway train. "It was sometimes high in the air and sometimes near the ground." The effect was tornado-like: trees and walls were knocked down. It's a late day now to try to verify this story, but a list is given of persons whose property was injured. We are told that this thing then disappeared "all at once."

Nature, 20-121,

there is an account by Mr. S.W. Clifton, Collector of Customs, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear day--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very swiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the moon-- [we contest that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not collect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a railway train, say--may.]

Robert Mallet's Catalogue (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1852),

"luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the horizon," Florence, Dec. 9, 1731—

"thick mists in the air, through which a dim light was seen: several weeks before the shock, globes of light had been seen in the air," Swabia, May 22, 1732—

violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape, Slavange, Norway, April 15, 1752—

"an immense globe," Switzerland, Nov. 2, 1761—

"strange, howling noises in the air, and large spots obscuring the sun," Palermo, Italy, April 16, 1817—

"luminous meteor moving in the same direction as the shock," Naples, Nov. 22, 1821—

fire ball appearing in the sky: apparent size of the moon, Thuringerwald, Nov. 29, 1831.

As to the extraordinary spectacle of a thing, ...... that was seen in the sky, in 1816, I have not yet been able to find out more. I think that here our acceptance is relatively sound: that this occurrence was tremendously of more importance than such occurrence as, say, transits of Venus, upon which hundreds of papers have been written--that not another mention have I found, though I have not looked so especially as I shall look for more data--that all but undetailed record of this occurrence was suppressed.

UFOs and ‘earthquakes’

There are many other instances that indicate proximity of other worlds during earthquakes. I note a few—

quake and an object in the sky, called "a large, luminous meteor" (Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst., 5-132);

luminous body in the sky, earthquake, and fall of sand, Italy, Feb. 12 and 13, 1870 (La Science Pour Tous, 15-159);

many reports upon luminous object in the sky and earthquake, Connecticut, Feb. 27, 1883 (Monthly Weather Review, February, 1883);

luminous object, or meteor, in the sky, fall of stones from the sky, and earthquake, Italy, Jan. 20, 1891 (L'Astronomie, 1891-154);

earthquake and prodigious number of luminous bodies, or globes, in the air, Boulogne, France, June 7, 1779 (Sestier, "La Foudre," 1-169);

earthquake at Manila, 1863, and "curious luminous appearance in the sky" (Ponton, Earthquakes, p. 124).