On the 4th of July 1803, a ball of fire struck the White Bull public-house, kept by John Hubbard, at East Norton. The chimney was thrown down by it, the roof in part torn off, the windows shattered to atoms, and the dairy, pantry, &c. converted into a heap of rubbish. It appeared like a luminous ball of considerable magnitude; and on coming in contact with the house, exploded with a great noise and a very oppressive sulphureous smell.

— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803

On May 19, 1997, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration detected an unprecedented sound in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Deep and vast, it descended in frequency over about 7 minutes. Here’s a sound file, sped up 16 times.

A few months later, and about 2,500 miles closer to Cape Horn, a Navy hydrophone picked up a mysterious “bloop.” This one matched the audio profile of a living creature; if so, it must have been gigantic, as the sound was audible more than 5,000 km away. Here’s a sound file of that one, similarly sped up.

No one knows whether the two are related; if something huge was headed for Chile, it never arrived. Neither sound has been heard since.

A Massachusetts paper says that Isaiah Thomas, the almanac-maker, when preparing the ‘annual’ of 1780, being asked by one of his boys what he should put in opposite July 13th, for weather predictions (a date overlooked), he replied ‘anything, anything.’ The boy returned to the office and set up ‘Rain, hail, and snow.’ The country was all amazed when the day came, for it actually rained, hailed, and snowed violently.

— Bizarre Notes & Queries, March 1887