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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
329
Of
course
the
requirements
now
facing
us
are:
Not
only
data
of
vast
wheel-like
super-constructions
that
have
relieved
their
distresses
in
the
ocean,
but
data
of
enormous
wheels
that
have
been
seen
in
the
air,
or
entering
the
ocean,
or
rising
from
the
ocean
and
continuing
their
voyages.
Very
largely
we
shall
concern
ourselves
with
enormous
fiery
objects
that
have
either
plunged
into
the
ocean
or
risen
from
the
ocean.
Our
acceptance
is
that,
though
disruption
may
intensify
into
incandescence,
apart
from
disruption
and
its
probable
fieriness,
things
that
enter
this
earth's
atmosphere
have
a
cold
light
which
would
not,
like
light
from
molten
matter,
be
instantly
quenched
by
water.
Also
it
seems
acceptable
that
a
revolving
wheel
would,
from
a
distance,
look
like
a
globe;
that
a
revolving
wheel,
seen
relatively
close
by,
looks
like
a
wheel
in
few
aspects.
The
mergers
of
ball-lightning
and
meteorites
are
not
resistances
to
us:
our
data
are
of
enormous
bodies.
So
we
shall
interpret--and
what
does
it
matter?
Our
attitude
throughout
this
book:
That
here
are
extraordinary
data--that
they
never
would
be
exhumed,
and
never
would
be
massed
together,
unless--
Here
are
the
data:
Our
first
datum
is
of
something
that
was
once
seen
to
enter
an
ocean.
It's
from
the
puritanic
publication,
Science,
which
has
yielded
us
little
material,
or
which,
like
most
puritans,
does
not
go
upon
a
spree
very
often.
Whatever
the
thing
could
have
been,
my
impression
is
of
tremendousness,
or
of
bulk
many
times
that
of
all
meteorites
in
all
museums
combined:
also
of
relative
slowness,
or
of
long
warning
of
approach.
The
story,
in
Science,
5-242,
is
from
an
account
sent
to
the
Hydrographic
Office,
at
Washington,
from
the
branch
office,
at
San
Francisco:
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