On July 8, 1886, according to Science Gossip, 1886-238, a land species of small snails fell during a heavy thunderstorm near Redruth, Cornwall. The number of them was so great that they were gathered up by the hatful, a species unknown in that district. A correspondent writing in the same issue said they must have been on the ground in the first place, and that “astonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen.” He met one person who said he had seen the snails fall, but “this was his error,” the investigator said.
–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p. 92 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).