Two shining objects

During the total eclipse of July 29, 1878, two astronomers, one in Rawlins, Wyoming and the other in Denver, Colorado, reported sighing two shining objects at a considerable distance from the sun. These were reported in Nature, Sept. 18, 1878, and Observatory, 2-161. Lockyer, in Nature, Aug. 20, 1878, wrote, “There is little doubt that an Intra-Mercurial planet has been discovered by Prof. Watson.”

–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p. 205ff (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974)

If ever anything did go up and stay up

According to Monthly Weather Review, May 1878, a barn and a horse were “carried completely away” in a Wisconsin tornado on May 23, 1878. Neither the horse nor the barn, the report says, were ever found, either in whole or in part.

–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p. 88-89 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).