Fortean Events in Birmingham & Wolverhampton - UK

 From "New Lands" by Charles Hoy Fort

 In the Birmingham Daily Post, June 14, 1858, Dr. C. Mansfield Ingleby,
 a meteorologist, writes:  "During the storm on Saturday (12th) morning,
 Birmingham was visited by a shower of aerolites. Many hundreds of
 thousands must have fallen, some of the streets being strewn with them."
 (46) Someone else writes than many pounds of the stones had been gathered
 from awnings, and that they had damaged greenhouses, in the suburbs.(47)

 In the Post, of the 15th, someone else writes that, according to his
 microscopic examinations, the supposed aerolites were only bits of the
 Rowley ragstone, with which Birmingham was paved, which had been washed
 loose by the rain.(48)

 It is not often that sentiment is brought into meteorology, but in the
 Report of the British Association, 1864-37, Dr. Phipson explains the
 occurrence meteorologically, and with an unconscious tenderness.(49)

 He says that the stones did fall from the sky, but that they had been
 carried in a whirlwind from Rowley, some miles from Birmingham. So we
 are to sentimentalize over the stones in Rowley that had been torn,
 by unfeeling paviers, from their companions of geologic ages, and
 exiled to the pavements of Birmingham, and then some of these little
 bereft companions, rising in a whirlwind and travelling, unerringly,
 if not miraculously, to rejoin the exiles.  More dark companions.
 It is said that they were little black stones.

 They fell again from the sky, two years later. In La Science Pour Tous,
 June 19, 1860, it is said that, according to the Wolverhampton
 Advertiser, a great number of little black stones had fallen, in a
 violent storm, at Wolverhampton.(50) According to all records findable
 by me no such stones have ever fallen anywhere in Great Britain, except
 at Birmingham and Wolverhampton, which is 13 miles from Birmingham.
 
 Eight years after the second occurrence, they fell again. English
 Mechanic, July 31, 1868 — that stones "similar to, if not identical
 with the well-known Rowley ragstones" had fallen in Birmingham, having
 probably been carried from Rowley, in a whirlwind.(51)

 We were pleased with Dr. Phipson's story, but to tell of more of the
 little dark companions rising in a whirlwind and going unerringly from
 Rowley to rejoin exiles in Birmingham is overdoing.
 That's not sentiment: that's mawkishness. 

 In the Birmingham Daily Post, May 30, 1868, is published a letter from
 Thomas Plant, a writer and lecturer upon meteorological subjects.
 Mr. Plant says, I think, that for one hour, morning of May 29, 1868,
 stones fell, in Birmingham, from the sky. His words may be interpretable
 in some other way, but it does not matter: the repeating falls are
 indication enough of what we're trying to find out — "From nine to ten,
 meteoric stones fell in immense quantities in various parts of town."
 "They resembled, in shape, broken pieces of Rowley ragstone...in every
 respect they were like the stones that fell in 1858."(52) In the Post,
 June 1, Mr. Plant says that the stones of 1858 did fall from the sky,
 and were not fragments washed out of the pavement by rain, because many
 pounds of them had been gathered from a platform that was 20 feet above
 the ground.

 From "New Lands" by Charles Hoy Fort

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