Case file · High strangeness
Glass beads rain on Ladoga
The Hypatian Chronicle says the mayor of Ladoga told the chronicler in 1114 that after heavy storms children found small glass beads in the earth, washed down 'from the clouds', and that in the north squirrels and young deer fell from clouds.
1114 CE · 60.00, 32.30 · status: explained
The account
The chronicler checked the story himself in Ladoga and collected beads. He uses it, with Greek parallels, to argue that God can make things fall from the sky. Staraya Ladoga was a major bead-making and trading town in the 8th to 10th centuries, and archaeologists have found thousands of glass beads in its earliest layers.
The sceptical view
Rain eroded old settlement layers and exposed beads lost or made there centuries earlier.