Falls
The study of materials or objects falling onto the earth was
first initiated by Charles Fort in his remarkable work The Book
of the Damned (1919). Fort collected and correlated accounts of
the most astonishing variety of falls, including black rain, red
snow, butter, manna, large blocks of ice, frogs, periwinkles, and
hailstones with portraits on them. He also distinguished selective
falls in which different objects were apparently sorted before
descent. Fort was not only concerned with the bizarre nature
of authenticated falls, but also by the principle of
selectivity that appeared to govern descent.
Since Forts death, further data on falls and other Fortean
phenomena have been collected by groups such as the Fortean
Society and the International Fortean Organization and by
such individuals as William R. Corliss and Robert J. M. Rickard,
editor of the Fortean Times.
Sources
Clark, Jerome. Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Phenomena.
Detroit Gale Research, 1993.
Corliss, William R., ed. Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena.
Glen Arm, Md. The Sourcebook Project, 1977.
. Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and Related
Weather Phenomena A Catalog of Geophysical Anomalies. Glen
Arm, Md. The Sourcebook Project, 1983.
Fort, Charles. The Books of Charles Fort. New York Henry
Holt, 1941.
