11.
Man-Made Space Debris
Every now and then, satellites, rockets, and other objects fall out of orbit and return
to Earth from space.
In some cases, this is expected, but sometimes, these pieces of equipment freefall to the
ground in an unplanned descent.
And it happens more often than you may think.
Take, for example, this rocket that crashed into the remote forest in Russia’s Komi
Republic back in 1992.
Late last year, a Russian rocket known as the Angara launch vehicle was catapulted into
space in the last of a series of demonstrations to prove its worthiness for longer and more
distant missions.
It flew skyward with plans to deposit a satellite into orbit and continue further on in its
journey.
If all went well, the Angara vehicle would replace several of the country’s existing
space rockets.
The initial phases of the launch were successful.
But things took a disappointing turn when the rocket’s upper section experienced an
engine failure and failed to go past a low-earth orbit.
The mission was abandoned, and the 20-ton (18 metric tons) spacecraft began descending
toward the Earth.
Experts scrambled to predict when and where it would hit in a bid to keep people safe
from the impact of the uncontrolled descent.
Shortly before the rocket hit, astronomer Jonathan McDowell from the U.S. Center for
Astrophysics said that the worst he expected was some damage to homeowners’ roofs.
Thankfully, the rocket touched down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, far from land and
people.
10.
The Kentucky Meat Shower
One day in 1876, foul-smelling chunks of meat poured onto a field in Bath County, Kentucky
from overhead.
Local resident Allen Crouch recalled the bizarre incident, which happened when his wife was
outside cooking soup.
He said that the meat looked like beef and fell like large snowflakes during a perfectly
clear sky.
Three men reportedly tasted the mysterious meat and came back with mixed reports.
They couldn’t agree on whether it was mutton, or sheep; venison, or bear meat.
Some rumors claimed that the meat was the lung tissue of a baby or a horse.
At least two histologists, or tissue experts, backed up these allegations.
Other scientific investigations could only conclude that the material was cartilage or
muscle tissue from an unknown animal.
One Dr. L.D.
Kastenbine concluded that the downpour of flesh came from a flock of vultures who all
threw up at the same time while flying over the field.
To this day, it remains the most credible theory, and can even explain the meat’s
rancid odor, which is to be expected with the vulture’s typical diet.
There are two vulture species in Kentucky.
Both are known for vomiting their food as a defense mechanism or to lighten themselves
before flying, indicating that the residents of Bath County were most likely the victims
of nothing other than bad timing.
9.
Worms
On a calm, clear day in 2011, earthworms rained down on Scottish children while they played
soccer in their schoolyard.
The creepy crawlers fell in tangled bunches, softly thudding against the ground as they
pelted the field and forcing the kids to end their game early.
Teacher David Chrichton and his coworkers recovered around 120 earthworms afterward.
They turned to the school’s science department, which failed to come up with an explanation
for the bizarre event.
Similar events were reported decades earlier in Massachusetts, Norway, and Sweden.
Then, in 2015, thousands of earthworms pelted the frozen ground in Norway.
Biologist Karsten Erstad witnessed the mess firsthand, which left an estimated 20 worms
per 10.8 square feet (1 meter2).
At first he thought they were dead, but when he picked them up, he realized that they were
very much alive.
Despite being a biologist, Erstad couldn’t come up with a logical explanation for the
experience.
After much speculation, experts determined that the worms were likely picked up by a
rising pocket of warm air near the coast, carried for a short distance, and then fell
back down to the earth.
How would you react to a shower of worms?
Share in the comments!
8.
“Blood” Rain
Throughout history, there have been many reports of terrifying blood-red rain pouring down
from the sky.
At times, the phenomenon was blamed on a biblical plague or considered a bad omen.
Answers came after people began seeking more logical explanations during the 19th century.
Generally speaking, “blood rain” refers to rain carrying fine desert sand or other
reddish particles, leaving behind a similarly colored dust in the air.
It usually happens after a desert storm, and its color varies depending on the color of
the sand the storm picks up.
And it can travel surprisingly far.
For example, the U.K. is known for occasionally receiving blood rain after storms in the Sahara
Desert 2,000 miles (3,219 km) away.
The phenomenon is also fairly common in other parts of Europe and elsewhere in the world,
including southern France and Spain, and it sometimes travels as far as Scandinavia.
During a monsoon in 2001, blood rain fell intermittently for several weeks in Kerala,
India.
It was reportedly strong enough to stain fabric and it fell in various colors, including red,
green, black, yellow, and brown.
Experts concluded that the rain was probably caused by dust from the Arabian Peninsula.
In 2018, the Siberian city of Norilsk experienced blood rain after the wind collected rust particles
from a factory clean-up.
And while the phenomenon can be dangerous, depending on the material that a storm picks
up and deposits, blood rain is usually relatively harmless.
7.
Spiders
Australians are already used to the country’s bizarre and, in many cases, utterly terrifying
wildlife.
But even they were shocked in 2015, when millions of spiders rained down on people’s homes
in the Southern Tablelands region.
Known as “spider rain” or “angel hair” for the silky threads the spiders leave behind,
the phenomenon isn’t exactly common, but it happens more often than most people would
think.
After catching word of the event through a Facebook post made by local resident Ian Watson,
reporters contacted experts to get their take on what exactly was going on.
Retired spider expert Rick Vetter explained that the strange sightings were probably the
result of a transportation method called ballooning.
In his words, this is a common behavior that happens when spiders climb to a high place,
“stick their butts up in the air and release silk.”
He further explained that it happens all the time, but that people usually don’t notice
it because it usually occurs in far smaller numbers.
Biologist Todd Blackledge explained that cases of mass ballooning likely result from many
spiders being ready to take off but being delayed by the weather.
Once conditions become optimal, the spiders all take to the air, making their travel much
more noticeable than usual.
Thankfully, the spiders that descended in Australia were deemed a non-threat to humans.
6.
Money
The one thing that most of us wish would fall from the sky actually has for a lucky few
throughout history.
In 1940, 16th-century rubles rained down on the Russian village of Meschera.
Archaeologists determined that erosion had exposed the hoard of cash from wherever it
was hidden, and that the wind had picked it up and carried it to where it fell.
It also rained money in 1968 when pennies mysteriously fell over Kent, England.
Many of the coins were bent, but nobody ever figured out why or where they came from.
In 2015, a large sum of cash totaling somewhere between $544,000 and $817,000 descended into
Kuwait City.
The rainfall consisted mostly of 500 Dirham notes, which are produced and distributed
in the United Arab Emirates, and lasted for several minutes, stopping traffic as people
flocked to grab up what they could.
No source for the money was ever identified, and nobody stepped forth to claim it.
Similar incidents of money falling from the sky have happened in Massachusetts, France,
Chicago, Germany, and elsewhere, and only some of them have been explained.
5.
Bats
Extreme heat waves have become an ongoing problem in Australia in recent years.
When temperatures rose to nearly 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44.2 Celsius) in 2018, a colony
of gray-headed flying fox bats in Campbelltown, New South Wales began to seriously suffer
from the heat.
Volunteers rushed to rescue the creatures as the severe conditions fried their brains
and made them incoherent.
Sadly, the effort to save the bats mostly failed, resulting in the deaths of more than
204 adults and babies.
As the animals perished, their carcasses fell from trees and onto the ground.
Many died but did not fall, which means that the death count was higher than the recovered
bodies indicate.
Young flying fox bats are more sensitive to the heat than adults.
They can become endangered as soon as temperatures reach 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius),
at which point their body starts losing the ability to regulate its temperature.
The bats in Campbelltown suffered from a lack of both water and shade, which sadly hastened
their demise and sent them plummeting to the ground below.
The impacts of climate change are far-reaching for wildlife.
Would you jump in and try to help if something like this happened near where you live?
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to like and subscribe to
the channel!
4.
The Oakville Blob
Rain falls on the small town of Oakville, Washington at least 275 days a year.
So when it began drizzling one August morning in 1994, residents initially regarded it as
just another ordinary day.
But they soon realized that the rain was coming down in the form of gelatinous blobs.
The torrential downpour of goo covered a 20-square-mile (51.8 km2) area six more times over the next
three weeks.
At the same time, many people experienced severe flu-like symptoms that lasted anywhere
from seven weeks to two or three months, according to resident Beverley Roberts in a 1997 episode
of Unsolved Mysteries.
The show also interviewed officer David Lacey, who claimed that the slime smeared all over
his windshield when he turned his wipers on.
He described the substance as “very mushy” and similar to Jell-O.
Mike McDowell, a microbiologist with the Washington Department of Health, tested samples of the
material.
He later said in several interviews that he believed the substance was of “unnatural”
origin.
The samples allegedly contained two organisms that are known to cause severe illness.
But before anyone else could test them, they conveniently disappeared.
When McDowell asked where the samples were, staff members reportedly responded by saying
“do not ask.”
He believes that the slime was manufactured, but nobody with the ability to share the information
publicly ever determined what it was or how it ended up in the rain clouds above Oakville.
3.
Frogs
People have been reporting unexplainable rain showers of frogs throughout the world for
centuries.
Kansas City, Missouri was pelted with frogs during a storm in 1873.
Then, in 1901, frogs and toads blanketed the city of Minneapolis during a storm, leaving
behind a three-inch-thick (7.6 cm) layer of amphibians across four city blocks.
In 1981, residents of Nafplion, Greece awoke to small frogs plopping down from above.
The Greek Meteorological Institute concluded that a strong wind had picked them up elsewhere
and then dumped them into the city.
But the frog species is native to Africa, making the theory seem a little far-flung.
There are dozens of other accounts of raining frogs.
Many were written off as cases of the amphibians falling from overhead places, like trees,
rather than the sky.
It is scientifically possible that some of these events were caused by extreme weather
like whirlwinds and tornadoes.
But scientific proof is lacking and there are plenty of doubters, including Charles
Fort, an early collector of reports of strange phenomena who found it odd that nobody reported
frogs missing from their pond or seeing them being swept up by the wind.
While it’s possible that anyone who witnessed such a strange occurrence might’ve been
more concerned with their safety than spreading the word, Fort’s argument reminds us that
nobody truly knows what caused these amphibious rain showers to happen.
2.
Golf Balls
One night in 1969 during what was otherwise a normal rainfall, golf balls poured down
on a neighborhood in Punta Gorda, Florida.
Local papers reported that “dozens and dozens and dozens” of them ended up on the streets,
in the sidewalk, in the gutters, and elsewhere.
A team of four police officers tried to collect the balls, but eventually got tired of doing
so because there were so many.
No local golf courses were missing any balls, and little came of the incident.
The most probable explanation is that a storm sucked them out of a pond and redistributed
them around town.
It makes sense, especially considering the regularity at which Florida’s Gulf Coast
experiences extreme weather, but the theory has never been proven and the mystery of where
the golf balls came from remains unsolved.
1.
Fish
There have been numerous reports of raining fish in various parts of the world throughout
history.
And while some of these cases can be explained by extreme weather, others involved fish that
seemed too heavy to be picked up by powerful winds or happened out of nowhere on a perfectly
clear day.
During one downpour in 1966, a large fish fell onto an Australian priest as he ran across
a courtyard.
In 1989, at least 800 sardine-like fish rained into several homeowners’ backyards during
a light drizzle in Australia.
A large portion of Singapore experienced a downpour of fish after an earthquake in 1861,
pointing to the correlation between the two events.
One of the most bizarre reports of fish rain on record came in 1956, when a couple noticed
a dark cloud forming over their home in Alabama and watched in horror as several different
species of live fish, including catfish and bream, showered onto their property.
The strong gusts that are characteristic of tornadoes and other major storms are often
powerful enough to flip cars over.
Taking this into consideration, it seems plausible that the weather could be responsible for
these mysterious events.
But nobody knows what causes them for sure, or if these events were possibly triggered
by different factors.
That’s all for today – thanks for watching!
Can you think of any other stories you’ve heard about unusual things falling from the
sky we missed?
Let me know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe.
Bye for now!