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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
342
An
account
by
M.
Acharius,
in
the
Transactions
of
the
Swedish
Academy
of
Sciences,
1808-215,
translated
for
the
North
American
Review,
3-319:
That
M.
Acharius,
having
heard
of
"an
extraordinary
and
probably
hitherto
unseen
phenomenon,"
reported
from
near
the
town
of
Skeninge,
Sweden,
investigated:
That,
upon
the
16th
of
May,
1808,
at
about
4
P.M.,
the
sun
suddenly
turned
dull
brick-red.
At
the
same
time
there
appeared,
upon
the
western
horizon,
a
great
number
of
round
bodies,
dark
brown,
and
seemingly
the
size
of
a
hat
crown.
They
passed
overhead
and
disappeared
in
the
eastern
horizon.
Tremendous
procession.
It
lasted
two
hours.
Occasionally
one
fell
to
the
ground.
When
the
place
of
a
fall
was
examined,
there
was
found
a
film,
which
soon
dried
and
vanished.
Often,
when
approaching
the
sun,
these
bodies
seemed
to
link
together,
or
were
then
seen
to
be
linked
together,
in
groups
not
exceeding
eight,
and,
under
the
sun,
they
were
seen
to
have
tails
three
or
four
fathoms
long.
Away
from
the
sun
the
tails
were
invisible.
Whatever
their
substance
may
have
been,
it
is
described
as
gelatinous--"soapy
and
jellied."
I
place
this
datum
here
for
several
reasons.
It
would
have
been
a
good
climax
to
our
expression
upon
hordes
of
small
bodies
that,
in
our
acceptance,
were
not
seeds,
nor
birds,
nor
ice-crystals:
but
the
tendency
would
have
been
to
jump
to
the
homogeneous
conclusion
that
all
our
data
in
that
expression
related
to
this
one
kind
of
phenomena,
whereas
we
conceive
of
infinite
heterogeneity
of
the
external:
of
crusaders
and
rabbles
and
emigrants
and
tourists
and
dragons
and
things
like
gelatinous
hat
crowns.
Or
that
all
things,
here,
upon
this
earth,
that
flock
together,
are
not
necessarily
sheep,
Presbyterians,
gangsters,
or
porpoises.
The
datum
is
important
to
us,
here,
as
indication
of
disruption
in
this
earth's
atmosphere--dangers
in
entering
this
earth's
atmosphere.
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