1919 / T023
Charles Fort publishes The Book of the Damned
New York publication; sources collected internationally
Witness account
Fort assembled reports of unusual falls, lights, objects, and other phenomena from newspapers and scientific periodicals, challenging what he considered the exclusion of awkward observations. The Book of the Damned helped preserve obscure material later reused in UFO literature. Its relevance is the history of collecting and interpreting anomalies, not a claim that a new UFO incident occurred in 1919.
Public record
The original book is readily identifiable, and chapter 16 directly discusses earlier astronomical observations, including Bonilla's report. Fort gives a L'Astronomie reference to 1885, illustrating the value of checking his citations against later retellings. His presentation mixes source excerpts, provocative conjecture, and literary argument; these components should not be assigned equal factual status.