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FORT, CHARLES |
Charles Hoy Fort, born 1874 in Albany, NY, was a writer who was the first to collect and comment on strange natural phenomena. He spent long hours in the New York Public library in the 1920�s searching newspapers and scientific journals for reports of oddities nature such as rains of animals and unexplained sounds or lights. He published four books on his collected findings.
He was not a fan of science in that he felt it was a stuffy �authority� group that utterly failed to adequately explain these abnormal occurrences. His dislike of authority, he admitted, came from his upbringing by a strict father. Charles left home as a young adult to travel the world and make his own way. He lived in poverty, at times, while pursuing his work. His intent was to chronicle the data science had excluded. However, eventually he formulated his own theories although never claiming they were scientific. They were fantastic ideas totally unsupported by science and he knew it. He invented the word �teleportation� and proposed a sea in the clouds to explain rain anomalies. He even suggested space creatures visit us. Fort may have been �skeptical� about the methods and results of science but he never showed much skepticism about all the extremely bizarre reports he collected. Fort died in 1932 with little money, few friends but quite a legacy. Interest in his work continued with a group of people who call themselves �Forteans�. Today, the International Fortean Organization and The Charles Fort Institute exists to promote works of Fort. William Corliss has taken up where Fort left off in the Sourcebook Project � a collection of anomalous phenomena from land, sea, sky, space, humans and animals. Several publications, such as Fortean Times, Strange Magazine and Fate, deal with the oddities of nature, cryptozoology and other paranormal themes. It�s fair to say that Mr. Fort would have felt right at home with the widespread interest in the paranormal and all the unscientific theories that are popular today.
- Sharon Hill (Scientist) |
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Fortean Times: ��
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The Skeptic Report: ��
Skeptic's Dictionary: ��
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