The Book of the Damned

Now we shall have something that is high up in the castes of the accursed: Comptes Rendus, 1887-182: That, upon June 20, 1887, in a "violent storm"--two months before the reported fall of the symmetric iron object of Brixton--a small stone had fallen from the sky at Tarbes, France: 13 millimeters in diameter; 5 millimeters thick; weight 2 grammes. Reported to the French Academy by M. Sudre, professor of the Normal School, Tarbes. This time the old convenience "there in the first place" is too greatly resisted--the stone was covered with ice. This object had been cut and shaped by means similar to human hands and human mentality. It was a disk of worked stone--"tres regulier." "Il a ete assurement travaille." There's not a word as to any known whirlwind anywhere: nothing of other objects or debris that fell at or near this date, in France. The thing had fallen alone. But as mechanically as any part of a machine responds to its stimulus, the explanation appears in Comptes Rendus that this stone had been raised by a whirlwind and then flung down. It may be that in the whole nineteenth century no event more important than this occurred. In La Nature, 1887, and in L'Annee Scientifique, 1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the summer numbers of Nature, 1887. Fassig lists a paper upon it in the Annuaire de Soc. Met., 1887. Not a word of discussion. Not a subsequent mention can I find. Our own expression: