If 150 years ago someone had said that stones can fall from the sky, they would not have believed him. Nevertheless, many have seen such a phenomenon. Back on November 7, 1492 in Enzisheim, in front of the whole army of Emperor Maximilian I, a huge stone fell from the clear sky. What kind of meteorite was it when it fell, who recorded it. Interesting story. Here's what we managed to find about him and about other meteorite falls in ancient times.
We have summary geographies, summary chronologies, and even summary philosophies: why don't we also have a summary natural history? Such an essay could be curious and entertaining for everyone. On the one hand, it would be necessary to describe the infantile traditions of antiquity, together with the remarks (sometimes quite just) of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Seneca, Pliny and Elian; and on the other hand, all the great discoveries made by the genius of Linnaeus, Buffon, Boniet, about the immeasurable kingdom of nature.
Such a comparison could present new and happy ideas to naturalists, revive their activities, enrich science, and we would then see with pleasant amazement that many ancient remarks, which hitherto were considered fables, and which the new physicists did not even deserve attention, contain important truths. I could prove by various examples the validity of this statement; but I will recall only one phenomenon, about which they were ashamed even to speak, but which for some time attracts the attention and curiosity of the most learned naturalists. I am talking about the stones falling from the sky, which are so often mentioned in our ancient chronicles. At this very minute one of them lies before my eyes; namely, the glorious Ensisheim Thunderstone, which made so much noise in the late 15th century. Many modern authors have spoken of this amazing case, as in prose,and in poetry.
“On November 7, 1492 (it is said in one chronicle) at 11 o'clock in the morning there was a terrible thunderclap in the vicinity of the city of Ensisheim, and one baby saw a great stone falling from the sky onto a field sown with wheat; he entered the ground three feet deep. It was dug up and placed on the porch of the local church for the people's curiosity. It was 260 pounds in weight. His Grace Maximilian broke off two pieces from this stone: one for himself, and the other for Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, and ordered him to be hanged in the Ensisheim church. - Another chronicle adds that it broke into two parts from a strong blow, and looked like a Greek delta in shape.
The Roman king Maximilian himself says in his book about the incidents of the German land that this stone fell with a great crash before his eyes when he stood in a camp with an army, preparing to march against the French. Maximilian proves that such a miracle happened not without reason, and that the Germans must certainly start a war with the Turks to liberate Jerusalem! After that, the words were depicted on this stone: multi nulta, omnes aliquid, nemo fatis.
The essay of Mr. Gallois, published in Paris in 1672, says the following: “One of the members of our academy is showing fragments of two stones that fell from the sky near Verona. They each weighed 300 pounds. They fell at night, in a clear and quiet time, seemed fiery in the air, flew obliquely and thundered terribly. This miracle astounded many people who saw it and did not know what to think. The stones from the strong fall went deep into the ground and immediately went out. The Verona academicians examined them with the greatest curiosity; they are yellow, soft and smell like sulfur. - As for the then scientists' opinions about this phenomenon, they are in no way consistent with the rules of modern physics and chemistry; however, one of them is noteworthy and in some way agrees with the thoughts of Citizen Laplace. Its author claims that these two stones came off the moon;and as she then entered and was in motion with the ground, then they had to fall obliquely.
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The curious asked the philosopher Anaxagoras, where did the stone fall from in Athens? He replied: "From the sky, like a shabby hut, which is being destroyed!"
The famous Italian physicist Santi in 1794 published a very learned treatise on this phenomenon; but we must confess that we cannot yet explain it satisfactorily.
Who is throwing stones from the sky?
If 150 years ago someone had said that stones can fall from the sky, they would not have believed him. Nevertheless, many have seen such a phenomenon. Back on November 7, 1492 in Enzisheim, in front of the whole army of Emperor Maximilian I, a huge stone fell from the clear sky. They also fell later, but this did not bother scientists. However, another huge cobblestone that fell with a terrible roar on September 13, 1768 in the French department of Maine made them ponder. To investigate the incident, the French Academy of Sciences appointed a special committee, which included the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier. From the very beginning of the investigation, he categorically stated: "There are no stones in the sky, so they cannot fall from there!"
Lavoisier interviewed witnesses to the event and carefully examined the stone. He immediately noticed that the heavenly messenger was melted. After a chemical analysis, Lavoisier concluded: the stone was on the ground all the time, and was alloyed by lightning hitting it! It seems that someone even saw this event. But often the stones fell without lightning.
I had to come up with another explanation - tornadoes. They also rejected this idea, because the falling of stones occurred even in calm weather. In the end, there was nothing to do but admit that stones can come from space. By the beginning of this century, many stone and metal meteorites were well studied. However, they constituted only a small part of the space debris falling on our heads …
Meanwhile, "stones from heaven" began to ask riddles. In 1887, one of the scientific journals reported a meteorite that was found inside a sawn beech! Moreover, the beech wood was black, as if burnt. Most likely, the message said, the messenger of heaven, red-hot from the passage of the atmosphere, was stuck in a tree. But earlier, on July 28, 1860, a huge rock covered with ice fell from the sky in Dhurmsalla (India). A British Association report noted that "fingers go numb from the cold when touched." It is incomprehensible that during the passage of the atmosphere the stone did not heat up, but cooled down.
One day a husband and wife and their three daughters watched a thunderstorm in Kesterton (Maryland, USA). Suddenly, a stone fell on their lawn, killing a sheep. He sank pretty deep into the ground. When it was brought out into the light of God, there was something to be surprised - it was a ball. It was demonstrated at the convention of the Royal Meteorological Society.
“The object was carved and cut by someone's small, human-like fingers.” These words begin a story that happened in 1887 in France, in Tarbes, where a small, graceful pebble 13 mm in diameter and 5 mm thick fell from the sky. It weighed only 2 grams, but raised a lot of questions. Who processed it in heaven?
On October 13, 1872, an unusual stone also fell near the town of Banja in Serbia. Since he belonged to a type of meteorite unknown on Earth, as it was then believed, he was called a banit. 7 years later, another sample of Banita fell in the nearby town of Elitsa. Why did these stones, unlike others, fall in almost the same place?
On February 10, 1896, a terrible explosion occurred in the skies over Madrid. Glass shattered throughout the city, and the wall of the building that housed the American embassy collapsed. Residents of the city jumped out of their homes in panic. For five and a half hours, glowing clouds hung over Madrid, from which stones were falling!
According to the New York Times, in February and March 1922, a similar rockfall occurred over the city of Chico, California. Many of the stones were large and smooth and seemed to be flying straight out of the clouds. The investigation showed that the meteorites had nothing to do with it, since some of the stones had traces of cement).
The Rand Daily Mail of May 29, 1922 reported that in Johannesburg, South Africa, stones fell on a pharmacy for several months. Moreover, the impression was created that they were trying to please the girl who worked there. The police, in order to make sure that it was the girl who was hunting, sent her out into the street. On the way, stones were falling around her all the time! According to their trajectory, the police tried to determine where the bully was hiding, but nothing came of it - stones fell vertically from the sky! For several weeks of observation, they fell only where the girl passed …
On the evening of October 27, 1973, two men were fishing at Scanitles Lake in New York State. Suddenly a large stone fell into the water next to them. Then two more, a little more. The rockfall intensified until it turned into a real shower of small pebbles! The fishermen hurried to the car. After a while, having driven a considerable distance, they decided to change their clothes and got out of the car. But stones fell on them again. Friends in misfortune had no choice but to hide in a nearby bar. Analysis of the stones, made by the Geological Department of Syracuse University, showed that the fallen pebbles were local.
In 1957, near the city of Pamphrey (Western Australia), for five whole days, stones fell around a young Aboriginal working on a farm! Scientists have reduced everything to "whims of the wind." But how could these "quirks" manifest themselves inside the tent where the young man hid?
1880 For 5 days, in front of 30 witnesses at a school near the Government House in Madras (India), bricks fell from an unknown source. The priest summoned to the scene recommended that one of them be marked with a white cross and placed in a prominent place. And almost immediately another brick fell on top of him "of exactly the same size, but with a black cross"! In Pondicherry, also in India, bricks started falling on the stairs in a house owned by the famous philosopher Sri Aurobindo. At the same time, eyewitnesses claimed that the bricks appeared ("appeared", as they said) right in the air!
In the house of Andrew Mackey, at one time, day and night, stones fell suspiciously softly, as if from a small height. Moreover, the stones that fell on the bed were warm. One of those present at the rockfall even saw "small white hands throwing these shells" (?)
In the spring, in the house of Mekki, the outrage ended, but exactly a year later it began in one of the monasteries of Naples, and only in the presence of one of the novices named Carlo Vulcane. Once, from nowhere, several stones fell. The next night, they filled up the entire floor, and the crash from their falls prevented anyone from falling asleep. Then several rooms were bombed. For almost a year the holy fathers endured this punishment until they decided to remove Carlo Vulcan from the monastery. And the rockfalls stopped!
Maybe the "flying saucers" are to blame, which for some reason drop stones? Or is the famous English physicist and chemist William Crookes right when he asserted that behind all this there is "the activity of a special kind of creatures living on this earth, but invisible and incorporeal for us"?