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New Lands

If the others were of the same origin—how could detonating meteors so repeat in one small local sky, and nowhere else, if this earth be a moving body? If it be said that only by coincidence did a meteor explode over a region where there had been other quakes, here is the question:
How many times can we accept that explanation as to similar series?

1857 – St Louis – October 8th

In Ponton's Earthquakes, p. 118, it is said that, upon the 8th of October, 1857, there had been, in Illinois, an earthquake, preceded by "a luminous appearance, described by some as a meteor and by others as vivid flashes of lightning." Though felt in Illinois, the center of the disturbance was at St. Louis, Mo. One notes the misleading and the obscuring of such wording: in all contemporaneous accounts there is no such indefiniteness as one description by "some" and another notion by "others."
Something exploded terrifically in the sky, at St. Louis, and shook the ground "severely" or "violently," at 4:20 A.M., Oct. 8, 1857.
According to Timbs’ Year Book of Facts, 1858-271, "a blinding meteoric ball from the heavens" was seen. "A large and brilliant meteor shot across the heavens" (St. Louis Intelligencer, October 8). Of course the supposed earthquake was concussion from an explosion in the sky, but our own interest is in a series that is similar to others that we have recorded.

1857 – St Louis – October 5th

According to the New York Times, October 12, a slight shock was said to have been felt four hours before the great concussion, and another three days before. But see Milne's Catalog of Destructive Earthquakes—not a mention of anything that would lead one away from safe and standardized suppositions. See Bull. Seis. Soc. Amer., 3-68—here the "meteor" is mentioned, but there is no mention of the preceding concussions. Time after time, in a period of about three days, concussions were felt in and around St. Louis. One of these concussions, with its "sound like thunder or the roar of artillery" (New York Times, October 8) was from an explosion in the sky.

March 17, 1871 - Upon the night of March 17, 1871, there was a series of events in France, and a series in England.
 - A "meteor" was seen at Tours, at 8 P.M.
—at 10:45, a "meteor" that left a luminous cloud over Saintes (Charante-Inferieure)
—another at Paris, 11:15, leaving a mark in the sky, of fifteen minutes’ duration
—another at Tours, at 11:45 P.M. See Les Mondes, 24-190, and Comptes Rendus, 72-789.
There were "earthquakes" this night affecting virtually all England north of the Mersey and the Trent, and also southern parts of Scotland. As has often been the case, the phenomena were thought to have been explosions and were then said to have been earthquakes when no terrestrial explosions could be heard of (Symons’ Met. Mag., 6-39). There were six shocks near Manchester, between 6 and 7 P.M., and others about 11 P.M.; and in Lancashire about 11 P.M., and continuing in places as far apart as Liverpool and Newcastle, until 11:30 o'clock. The shocks felt about 11 o'clock correspond, in time, with the luminous phenomena in the sky of France, but our way of expressing that these so-called earthquakes in England may have been concussions from repeating explosions in the sky, is to record that, according to correspondence in the London Times, there were, upon the 20th, aërial phenomena in the region of Lancashire that had been affected upon the 17th—"sounds that seemed to come from a number of guns at a distance" and "pale flashes of lightning in the sky."