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The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort

Falls of salt have occurred often. They have been avoided by scientific writers, because of the dictum that only water and not substances held in solution, can be raised by evaporation.  However, falls of salty water have received attention from Dalton and others, and have been attributed to whirlwinds from the sea. This is so reasonably contested--quasi-reasonably--as to places not far from the sea-- But the fall of salt that occurred high in the mountains of Switzerland--

An. Rec. Sci.,  1872
Large crystals of salt fell--in a hailstorm--Aug. 20, 1870, in Switzerland. The orthodox explanation is a crime: whoever made it, should have had his finger-prints taken. We are told  that these objects of salt "came over the Mediterranean from some part of Africa."  One reads such an assertion, and provided it be suave and brief and conventional, one seldom questions--or thinks "very strange" and then forgets. One has an impression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three inches wide, on the map; Switzerland only a few more inches away.

Amer. Jour. Sci., 3-3-239,
  "essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt." As to occurrence with hail--that can in one, or ten, or twenty, instances be called a coincidence.

 London Times, Dec. 25, 1883:
Translation from a Turkish newspaper; a substance that fell at Scutari, Dec. 2, 1883; described as an unknown substance, in particles—or flakes?--like snow. "It was found to be saltish to the taste, and to dissolve readily in water."