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The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort

Proc. Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland, 1-1-121:
That, in a lump of coal, from a mine in Scotland, an iron instrument had been found--
"The interest attaching to this singular relic arises from the fact of its having been found in the heart of a piece of coal, seven feet under the surface."  The important point is that there was no sign of boring: that this instrument was in a lump of coal that had closed around it so that its presence was not suspected, until the lump of coal was broken.

Notes and Queries, 11-1-408,
 there is an account of an ancient copper seal, about the size of a penny, found in chalk, at a depth of from five to six feet, near Bredenstone, England. The design upon it is said to be of a monk kneeling before a virgin and child: a legend upon the margin is said to be: "St. Jordanis Monachi Spaldingie."

Scientific American, 7-298,
a newspaper story:  that about the first of June, 1851, a powerful blast, near Dorchester, Mass., cast out from a bed of solid rock a bell-shaped vessel of an unknown metal: floral designs inlaid with silver; "art of some cunning workman."

Nature, 35-36:
A block of metal found in coal, in Austria, 1885. It is now in the Salsburg museum.

L'Astronomie, 1887-114
We're a little involved here. Our own acceptance is upon a carved, geometric thing that, was found in a very old deposit, antedates human life, except, perhaps, very primitive human life, as an indigenous product of this earth: but we're quite as much interested in the dilemma it made for the faithful.  As to the deposit--Tertiary coal.  Composition--iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel. For a full account of this subject, see Comptes Rendus, 103-702. The scientists who examined it could reach no agreement. That it was of true meteoritic material, and had not been shaped by man; or that it was not of true meteoritic material, but telluric iron that had been shaped by man.  The data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of these explanations, are: geometric form; presence in an ancient deposit; material as hard as steel; absence upon this earth, in Tertiary times, of men who could work in material as hard as steel.
It is said that, this object is virtually a steel object.  It's a cube. There is a deep incision all around it. Of its faces, two that are opposite are rounded.

London Times, June 22, 1844:
that some workmen, quarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a mile below Rutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone at a depth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the office of the Kelso Chronicle.  Pretty little thing; not at all frowsy.

London Times, Dec. 24, 1851:
That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California, had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped--split open--nail in it. There was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. "It was entirely straight and had a perfect head."

Communication by Sir David Brewster (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1845-51):
That a nail had been found in a block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry, North Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no evidence--except that it could not have been from the surface. The quarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate layers of hard stone and a substance called "till." The point of the nail, quite eaten with rust, projected into some "till," upon the surface of the block of stone. The rest of the nail lay upon the surface of the stone to within an inch of the head--that inch of it was embedded in the stone.

Pop. Sci. News, 1884-41:
That, according to the Carson Appeal, there had been found in a mine, quartz crystals that could have had only 15 years in which to form: that, where a mill had been built, sandstone had been found, when the mill was torn down, that had hardened in 12 years: that in this sandstone was a piece of wood "with a nail in it."

American Journal of Science:
An account, sent by a correspondent, to Prof. Silliman, of something that was found in a block of marble, taken November, 1829, from a quarry, near Philadelphia (Am. J. Sci., 1-19-361). The block was cut into slabs. By this process, it is said, was exposed an indentation in the stone, about one and a half inches by five-eighths of an inch. A geometric indentation: in it were two definite-looking raised letters, like "I U": only difference is that the corners of the "U" are not rounded, but are right angles. We are told that this block of stone came from a depth of seventy or eighty feet.  It may seem grotesque to think that an indentation in sand could have tons of other sand piled upon it and hardening into stone, without being pressed out--but the famous Nicaraguan footprints were found in a quarry under eleven strata of solid rock.