JM: When I first read Matt Roth's posting I didn't
realize that the farmer wasn't killed by the ice chunk, nor
that such occurrences weren't sufficiently registered in 1957.
With the steady increase of airplanes crossing the sky, their global
occurrence when Nabokov wrote "Pale Fire" must have gained attention and
it's surprising that M.Roth's find is the only available one in that
decade ( an information of the kind that Nabokov could have read).
From the CSI fictional developments only 24 similar instances took
their toll on human life. It would be interesting to find out what were the
sources used for the composition of their plot and if there were other
newspaper notices, besides the special one located by M.R..
....................................................................................................................................................................................
* - "Farmer Puzzled As Cakes of Ice Fall From Sky" READING,
Pa. (INS)—Farmer Edward, Groff may wonder today if there ij somethiing to
"Chicken LittW fear, that "the sky is falling down." Groff was standing in
one of his fields at Bernville, near Reading, Tuesday night when a 50 pound
chunk of ice tumbled from the sky, narrowly missing him. He rushed to the house
to tell his wife of the strange happening and as they talked another
whistling sound was heard and another cake of ice landed nearby. GROFF
said the first cake was two feet-in diameter and the other was 18 inches. The
puzzled-farmer put both in his freezer and called police. State police theorized
the ice may have fallen from a cargo plane or a plane engaged in cloudseeding.'
They admitted, however, they hadn't heard of any ramrmaking in the.area.
, ANOTHER theory advanced was that the ice cakes are related to Tuesday
night's hail storm that hit the Schwenksville area, about 30 miles from
Bernville. The ice will be sent to the state capital for analysis."Wednesday,
July 31,1957 THE HAMMOND TIMES