Did anything out of the usual order occur on the face of the earth about this time?

Yes.  In the year 1871, on Sunday, the 8th of October, at half past nine o’clock in the evening, events occurred which attracted the attention of the whole world, which caused the death of hundreds of human beings, and the destruction of millions of property, and which involved three different States of the Union in the wildest alarm and terror.

The summer of 1871 had been excessively dry; the moisture seemed to be evaporated out of the air; and on the Sunday above named the atmospheric conditions all through the Northwest were of the most peculiar character.  The writer was living at the time in Minnesota, hundreds of miles from the scene of the disasters, and he can never forget the condition of things.  There was a parched, combustible, inflammable, furnace-like feeling in the air, that was really alarming.  It felt as if there were needed but a match, a spark, to cause a world-wide explosion.  It was weird and unnatural.  I have never seen nor felt anything like it before or since.  Those who experienced it will bear me out in these statements.

At that hour, half past nine o’clock in the evening, at apparently the same moment, at points hundreds of miles

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apart, in three different States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the most peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous combustion.

In Wisconsin, on its eastern borders, in a heavily timbered country, near Lake Michigan, a region embracing four hundred square miles, extending north from Brown County, and containing Peshtigo, Manistee, Holland, and numerous villages on the shores of Green Bay, was swept bare by an absolute whirlwind of flame.  There were seven hundred and fifty people killed outright, besides great numbers of the wounded, maimed, and burned, who died afterward.  More than three million dollars’ worth of property was destroyed.[1]

It was no ordinary fire.  I quote: 

“At sundown there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness.  For two hours there were no signs of danger; but at a few minutes after nine o’clock, and by a singular coincidence, precisely the time at which the Chicago fire commenced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar.  It was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. Instantly the heavens were illuminated with a terrible glare. The sky, which had been so dark a moment before, burst into clouds of flame.  A spectator of the terrible scene says the fire did not come upon them gradually from burning trees and other objects to the windward, but the first notice they had of it was a whirlwind of flame in great clouds from above the tops of the trees, which fell upon and entirely enveloped everything.  The poor people inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead.  This is verified by the appearance of many of the corpses.  They were found dead in the roads and open spaces, where there were no visible marks of fire near by, with not a trace of burning upon their bodies or clothing.  At the Sugar Bush, which is an extended clearing, in some places four miles in width,