Fire from heaven

摘要

At half past six on the morning of December 14th 1807, the folk of Wes-ton, Connecticut, were woken up by a loud bang. Shortly afterwards, it rained rocks. In earlier times such hard rain might have been seen as a sign of the gods' displeasure. The folk of Weston, however, saw it as an opportunity. "Strongly impressed with the idea that these stones contained gold and silver, they subjected them to all the tortures of ancient alchemy, and the goldsmith's crucible, the forge, and the blacksmith's anvil, were employed in vain to elicit riches which existed only in the imagination."