The Annual Register, 1821-681, reports a shower of “a substance resembling silk,” according to M. Laine, French Consul at Pernambuco, early in Octoboer 1821. Samples of this substance were sent to France by M. Laine, according to Annales de Chimie, 2-15-427. They “proved to have some resemblances to silky filaments which, at certain times of the year, are carried by the wind near Paris.”
Fort writes that “the quantity was as tremendous as might be a whole cargo, lost somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, having drifted around perhaps for centuries, the original fabrics slowly disintegrating.”
–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p59 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).