On this day:
PHOSPHORESCENT SPIDER WEBS AND STRANDS FROM THE SKY
On November 21, 1898, in Alabama, large amounts of a luminous, cobwebby material fell to earth. The gossamer threads were as strong as asbestos and sometimes formed in pieces several inches square. In 1971, in California, "spaceships" oscillating in the sky above the Monterey Bay were reported emitting an exhaust of floating fibers, which fell from behind them. In 1973, in Massachusetts, a woman witnessed a glowing, globe-shaped object in the sky simultaneous to shimmering strands sticking to the leaves and wires outdoors.
In 1970, in New Jersey, strands of a mysterious material were seen hanging down from the sky—not straight down, but "stretched taut at angles of between thirty and fifty degrees to ground level." The ends were never located. One strand fell, tangled, into someone's yard. Four boys discovered a line that had drooped low enough to grab. Reeling for over an hour revealed no end, and then the strand broke off from the sky and curled up into a spool on the ground. A university professor examined specimen and discovered a hollow tube running down the center of the strand. The tube was empty in the first analysis, but filled with a solid substance in the next.
In 1972 a single fiber strand was seen dangling from the sky in Georgia. The "kite string" sighting was investigated by a newspaper reporter, who discovered a man who had climbed onto his roof to reach the lowest point of the loop. The man was yanking in yards and yards of the incredibly strong fiber. There were two kinds of material in the strand; one was "fluffy, shiny, white" threads, and the other threads were a "tiny, hard-finished green material."
In 1978, in Ohio, a man discovered a single strand snagged on a bramble in his backyard. After he called in his neighbors, they began to gather the line and filled up eight fishing reels with 1,000 feet of the stuff before the thread broke and floated away.
Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009
