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Cosmic butter? =: O

All the talk about bio-contamination made me remember something I'd read in
Robert Haag's catalog.  He took it from Reader's Digest Mysteries of the
Unexplained.  Perhaps it could even be a theory for Bjorn Sorheim's burning
cometary material floating on the sea?

Where the citizens of Rahway, NJ saw "fiery rain" fall to the ground on
November 13, 1833, they found "lumps of jelly".  And a woman milking a cow
at West Point, NY on the same day saw something land "with a splosh" beside
her.  It was a round, flattened mass the size of a teacup and perfectly
transparent.  This occurred at sunrise.  At 10:00 am, she went out to show
some people the jelly, but found that it had disappeared. In its place, a
boy found some white particles the size of a pinhead, but they
disintegrated into powder and disappeared when he tried to pick them up. 
(Letter from Alexander Twining to Prof. Denison Olmsted of Yale College).
(The American Journal of Science and Arts 1: 363-411, Jan. 1834)

                                                         ***************

 A foul-smelling substance, the consistency of butter, fell over large
areas of southern Ireland in the winter and spring of 1696.  According to
the Bishop of Cloyne, this "stinking dew" fell in "lumps, often as big as
the end of one's finger"; it was "soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow
color"; the cattle in fields where it fell continued to feed as usual. 
According to Mr. Robert Vans of Kilkenny, the local people believed the
"butter" was a useful medicine and collected it in pots and pans.
(Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 19:224-25
March-May, 1696)

                                                            ***************

Nut sized lumps of odorless, grey resinous matter fell on Vilna, Lithuania,
during a rainstorm on April 4, 1846.  When the material was burned, it
released a pervasive sweet smell.  After being soaked in water for 24 hours
it swelled and seemed completely gelatinous.  (Compres Rendus hebdomadaired
des seances de l'academie des sciences, 23:542)

                                                            
*****************

On January 21 1803, a shooting star fell to Earth in Silesia between
Barsdorf and Freiburg (now Swiebodzice); it's trajectory was low, and
witnesses heard a whizzing sound as it went by.  For some time, the
meteorite seemed to lie burning on the ground, and its point of impact was
therefore easily observed.  In the morning, a mass of jelly-like material
was found on the snow at the landing place.  (Report of the Thirteenth
Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
30:62-63, 1860.)

                                                             
********************

Anyone have any theories?  I'd love to hear them.

Anyone for star jelly on their toast this morning? That would be one
expensive breakfast!   ; )

Regards,
Jeanne


_________________________________________
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither

enjoy much, nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that 
knows not victory nor defeat.       T. Roosevelt

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