The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

III. Matchless 1833 Spectacle Unsurpassed in History

According to astronomers, the meteoric shower of the night of November 12/13, 1833, was the most remarkable of its kind on record. The noted contemporary observer, Denison Olmsted, professor of astronomy at Yale, who collated all the available data, called it “an exhibition of the phenomenon called SHOOTING STARS, which was probably more extensive and magnificent than any similar one hitherto recorded.” ¹⁸ PFF4 294.1

“A modern Harvard astronomer” describes it thus: PFF4 295.1

“In the early morning of November 13, 1833, the people of the United States were waked by early risers to turn out and see the stars fall. And fall they did silently, singly, in bursts and sheaves, tiny ones and balls like the moon. All the observers saw that the meteors darted away from a single point in the sky [in the constellation Leo]; the meteors ‘were like the ribs of a gigantic umbrella.’ So plain was this that two quite amateur observers made sketches, ... so far as we know the only drawings of the phenomenon that have survived.” ¹⁹ Beginning about midnight, the meteors came more frequently, until they were described as being thick as snowflakes, ²⁰ just before dawn blotted out the sublime spectacle. The sky was “literally ablaze,” as “in a few hours more than a billion shooting stars appeared over the United States and Canada alone.” ²¹ This “rare and wonderful display” of “terrible magnitude” ²² was seen in nearly equal splendor and duration from Canada to Mexico, from mid-Atlantic to the Pacific. ²³ PFF4 295.2

The American Indians in the West were so impressed by it that various tribes used it as “a milestone in their calendars.” ²⁴ In these calendars, as, for example, among the Dakota tribes, the winter of 1833/34 was designated in picture writing by some symbol of a star shower, and called the winter when “the stars fell,” “it rained stars,” or “the stars moved around,” the “storm-of-stars winter,” and similar names. ²⁵ PFF4 295.3

Simon Newcomb. Astronomy for Everybody (1st ed.), p. 280; W. J. Fisher. “The Ancient Leonids,” The Telescope, October, 1934, p. 83; Clyde Fisher and Marian Lockwood, op. cit., p. 89. PFF4 295.4

Picture 2: COURTESY. BUREAU OF AMERICAAN ETHNOLOGY
Page 295

With the general population of the country “the falling of the stars” was an occasion of awe tinged with delight or fear, as the case might be. Many gathered in groups in churches, schoolhouses, and homes. Some dropped to their knees to pray; others ran to neighbors to confess wrongs. On this “night of restitution,” as it was also called, stolen things were suddenly returned. Many felt sure the day of judgment was at hand. And many devout students of the Word believed God had written in the sky. PFF4 297.1