Back in the 1st century, the Roman historian Titus Livy described the fall of stones on the sacred grove at the top of Mount Alban.
There is a Greg Catalog which chronicles the "rockfalls". According to her, more than two thousand stones have fallen to the ground since the II century, and not all of them turned out to be meteorites.
Diving cobblestones
On November 7, 1492, in Enzisheim (Alsace, now the territory of France), soldiers of the army of the Austrian Emperor Maximilian I watched as a huge boulder fell from a cloudless sky. But no one investigated this episode. Over the next centuries, several more similar cases were recorded, and again they did not attract the attention of researchers.
This continued until September 13, 1768, when another cobblestone sank to the ground in the French department of Maine. The French Academy of Sciences entrusted the investigation to a special committee, of which the famous chemist Antoine Lavoisier was a member. The scientist immediately categorically stated that no stones from the sky can fall!
Having carefully examined the fallen cobblestone, the chemist found traces of melting on it. From this it was concluded that the stone did not fall from anywhere, but lay on the ground and melted at the moment lightning hit it! It is clear that this version could not explain other cases when no lightning was observed even close.
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Another hypothesis was put forward, according to which tornadoes were "accused" of flying stones. But it turned out that most of the rockfalls occurred in clear weather. Then, finally, the "space" version appeared.
In 1887, one of the scientific publications published a note about a meteorite found inside a sawn beech. The beech wood turned out to be black, charred in places. The researchers suggested that the red-hot stone, when falling, simply got stuck in the tree trunk.
Ice, ball and "heavenly arrows"
On July 28, 1860 in Dhurmsalla (India) a huge rock covered with a crust of ice fell. How he managed to cool down and not heat up, flying through the earth's atmosphere, remained unclear.
Even more striking was the following case. A family from Chesterton, Maryland, USA, during a thunderstorm, watched as a huge stone fell on the lawn where sheep were grazing. He killed one of the sheep and went deep into the earth. When they got it out, it turned out that it has the shape of a regular ball. The unusual find was demonstrated at the convention of the Royal Meteorological Society.
On September 4, 1886, in Charleston (South Carolina), during the day, heated stones fell onto a section of the pavement with a total area of about 500 meters.
In 1887, a strange story happened in Tarbes, France. A pebble with a diameter of 13 and a thickness of 5 millimeters fell from the sky. Its weight was only two grams. But the most surprising thing was that the object appears to have been carved out of stone and beveled.
On February 10, 1896, an explosion thundered over Madrid. Glass shattered in the windows of the houses, and the wall of the building of the American embassy collapsed. After that, for several hours, glowing clouds hung over the capital of Spain, from where stones fell down!
In February and March 1922, rockfalls hit the city of Chico in the US state of California. The stones were large and smooth, and, as it seemed to eyewitnesses, fell directly from the clouds. Subsequently, traces of cement were found on some of the stones, so the version of the meteorite had to be dismissed.
On July 28, 1960, a rock covered with ice fell from the sky in Benares (India).
In the summer of 1978, the tractor driver Alexander Gushchin, a resident of the village of Upper Uimon (Mountain Altai), watched a fiery arrow fall to the ground. Having examined the place of its fall, he found a funnel about 0.5 meters deep, and in it - a cone-shaped stone with straight shallow grooves carved into it. By the way, neither the file nor the hacksaw left any marks on the stone. Gushchin informed the scientists about the find, but flatly refused to hand it over for examination.
Poltergeist
Often, mysterious rockfalls are associated with manifestations of poltergeist. They can haunt so-called “restless” homes and individuals.
So, in 355, on one of the winter nights, in the German city of Bingen on the banks of the Rhine, furniture vibrated in houses, people fell from their beds. At the same time, strange sounds were heard from the street, huge stones were flying outside the windows. The same thing happened five centuries later at Kembden, near Bingen. During these mysterious events, a voice was heard from the sky, which announced that the rockfall and everything else was a punishment for the inhabitants of Cambden for their sins.
In 1880, for five days, bricks fell out of nowhere in the area of the school located next to the Government House in Madras (India). A local priest advised to mark one of them with a white cross. And then another one, marked with a black cross, fell from above! A similar phenomenon was observed in the Indian city of Pondicherry, in the house of the famous philosopher Sri Aurobindo. Bricks fell on the kitchen boy who worked in the house, as if they appeared straight out of thin air.
In 1831, newspapers reported about a 12-year-old girl from the island of Java, who somehow attracted a rockfall. The stones, which came from nowhere, fell at her feet, however, without causing her any harm. Some of them weighed up to nine kilograms. When one day the locals gathered stones that fell next to the girl and threw them into a mountain stream, they flew out of the water a few minutes later.
In 1922, in Johannesburg (South Africa), for several months unknown "intruders" threw stones at one of the pharmacies. However, the police were never able to find those responsible. But it turned out that rockfalls always occur in the presence of a pharmacy worker.
And in 1927, in Kottrebach, hail of stones began to haunt 13-year-old Tibor and his cousin Ladislaus Kossny, who were returning from fishing. When the boys tried to hide in a nearby tavern, stones began to fall there, breaking dishes. They penetrated from the street through closed shutters, were very hot to the touch, and soon disappeared somewhere, as if dissolving in air.
As soon as the children left the tavern, the rockfall resumed. The parents forced Ladislaus and Tibor to go to church. On the way there, several coins fell at their feet, also from nowhere. The strange phenomena continued until Tibor was sent to a relative living far from Cottrebach.
In 1934, a poltergeist arose in Grenada. Someone unseen threw stones at the walls of an abandoned house in Lowters Lane. And on January 14, 1935, the house burned to the ground. The cause of the fire was never found.
In 1957, near the town of Pamphray, Western Australia, stones haunted a farm worker for several days. The experts investigating this case said that the wind brought them. But how could the stones end up inside the tent where the victim hid?
Invisible
On the evening of October 27, 1973, two men were fishing in Scanitles Lake, New York. Suddenly a large stone fell into the water next to them. Behind him is another. Gradually, a real rockfall began, however, small pebbles were already falling from the sky.
When the fishermen got into the car, the stones continued to chase them. Analysis by experts from the Geological Faculty of Syracuse University showed that all the stones were of local origin.
On May 29, 1973, stone rain fell on four houses in the Belgian town of Wielsel. It was noted that the stones fell only when a 14-year-old boy, the son of one of the residents, was nearby.
On October 27 of the same year, the "invisible man" threw stones at two people. in the town of Scanitles, New York.
On July 21, 1979, in the city of Causeni (Moldova), brown stone balls with a diameter of 1 to 1.5 centimeters fell on the roof and in the courtyard of the house of ID Skitsenko for one and a half minutes. The owner picked up a few. Inside the balls, there was a blue-gray scale, like after electric welding. Pebbles were melted here and there and attracted to the magnet.
In no case was it possible to establish the cause of the rockfall. Perhaps this phenomenon is associated with psychokinesis - the ability of people to influence objects at a distance. By the way, some researchers believe that the ancient Egyptians used psychokinetic abilities in the construction of pyramids.
Irina SHLIONSKAYA