On Sept. 4, 1851, Rev. W. Read, a “diligent observer” for 28 years with a high quality telescope, saw a host of self-luminous bodies, moving at different speeds. He observed these bodies, which mostly moved east to west, for six hours. They occupied a zone of several degrees in breadth, in the field of his telescope. Two other members of his family also witnessed the objects, according to letters in the Monthly Notices of the R. A. S., 11-48 and 12-38.
–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p218 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).