Turn on the TV or the radio, or scroll any news site online and
you'll no doubt be inundated with stories about crazy weather anomalies happening all around the
globe, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, tornadoes, and so much
more. But none of us, thankfully, have ever lived through one of
the strangest events in history, when something a lot more dense than rain began
falling from the skies onto some unsuspecting farmers in the small town of Olympia Springs,
Kentucky. These are the bizarre but true stories from history and in some
way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history
of food. I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of my
supporters on Patreon. You help me out immensely in getting this show made,
and today I want to send a special shout out to the following supporters,
Ryan Kokuizovich, Oleg Chaichuk, Cameron Paddy Ian Fox, Claudio Richard, Maria
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just like you've heard today. But please, this is absolutely pressure free.
More than anything, I just love that you listen to the podcast and get
some enjoyment out of it, and that is the reason why I keep making
this show. Now back to the episode, Strange Things falling from the sky
is apparently not limited to the main part or excuse the pun meat of today's
story. There have been numerous stories throughout history of various types of flightless animals
raining down from the heavens, with varying degrees of intrigue from those caught underneathodore
As far back as the first century AD, we have reports from the Roman
historian Pliny the Elder about storms bringing with them downpours of frogs and fish.
More recently, in seventeen ninety four, French military soldiers watched in amazement as
toads fell from the sky during a particularly heavy rainstorm near the French city of
Lille. And they are not alone, not by a long shot. There
are more than twenty examples alone of fish falling from the sky in places far
removed from one another, from Singapore to Nigeria, India to Ethiopia, as
well as a variety of US states. In what would be considered my literal
nightmare, there are at least three recorded incidents of spiders raining down from the
sky, and, in a turn of events that will surprise absolutely no one,
two of them just happen to occur in Australia, where even the weather
is trying to actively maim or kill you. There have been reports of frogs,
toads, jellyfish, worms, octopi, starfish, and even snakes all
raining down from the heavens in one part of the world or another. Now,
there are many theories out there as to what the cause of these strange
occurrences could be, and some of them are very reminiscent of that all time
classic movie Sharknado. Just like in the movie, one of the theories is
that a tornado forms over a body of water, creating a water spout that
sucks up a variety of unsuspecting marine life high into the atmosphere and carries them
with it as it begins traveling over the land, whereby, as the tornado
begins losing energy, the poor creatures are released from the death spiral to rain
down upon the surrounding areas. Other's theory is, for the second of the
day, not exactly water tight, as it fails to account for certain characteristics
of these animal showers, which generally seemed to involve one specific species of animal
each time, instead of a variety of animals or marine life, as you
would expect if a water spout was just sucking up animals indiscriminately. An alternate
theory comes from a French naturalist named Francis de la Porte de castle Now,
who, after reports of fish raining down in Singapore in eighteen sixty one,
theorized that instead of actually witnessing the fish falling from the sky after a heavy
storm, people had simply found hundreds of fish flopping about the countryside. He
speculated that what the Singaporean people had in fact experienced was nothing more than a
migration of walking catfish, who had simply dragged themselves across the land from puddle
to puddle as they followed the storm. Now, this too has its own
theoretical flaws, but at the very least it's interesting as a thought experiment.
Of all of these cases, there is one that stands out above the rest.
Where all of these stories were once off occurrences there is one that has
been reoccurring, reportedly up to four times a year. In fact, in
the rural department of Yoro in Honduras. It has become such a big part
of life there that in nineteen ninety eight they began holding an annual festival to
celebrate Aguacharro de Pascado, otherwise known as the downpour of Fish. Each year,
the festival starts on a different date, waiting until the first major rainfall
in either May or June. Parades and a carnival accompany this festival that has
a fascinating and potentially supernatural origin story. The boring explanation is similar to the
water spark theory of fish being sucked up over water and then deposited over the
land. However, this is somewhat difficult to believe in that the region is
landlocked and the tornado would have to travel more than seventy kilometers from the Atlantic
Ocean, which is the nearest source of fish, and then why would it
happen so regularly here, depositing the fish consistently in Yorrow and not anywhere else
along the route. The only other natural explanation, which is by far the
more plausible of the two is that there is a vast network of underground lakes
and rivers surrounding and beneath yarrow. This theory hypothesizes that the fish migrate from
above ground rivers and somehow end up in these subterranean water systems. Then,
when the heavy rainfalls come, these below ground systems flood, forcing water and
fish up through natural springs, geysers, and other openings in the earth above,
leaving thousands of fish stranded when the waters once again recede. However,
it is the third explanation for this consistent occurrence that is by far the most
spectacular of them all, and this story involves a Spanish priest named Father Jose
Manuel de Jesus Suberana, who worked in euro from eighteen fifty five until his
death in eighteen sixty four. As the legend goes, father Subirana saw how
poor the people of Honduras were, and so did what any good spiritual intercessor
would do and prayed to God for their relief. He locked himself in his
room and for three days and three nights he prayed non stop, asking God
for a miracle to help provide the poor people with food. At the end
of the third night of the Father's praying, a dark cloud fell across the
land. As God above answered his humble servant's prayers, a torrential downpour of
rain began to fall, and with it came an abundance of delicious fish falling
from the sky, enough to feed all of the people. And since then,
this miracle has been repeated every single year, often multiple times a year,
as a reminder of God's goodness to his people. But let's pivot now
to our main story of the episode, and let's fast forward just ten years
after the Father Suberana miracle to March third, eighteen seventy six, as we
find ourselves in rural Kentucky in a small town named Olympia Springs. It was
here in this town on this day that the strangest shower of all occurred,
which had no accompanying rainfall, no particularly abnormal wind, in fact, nothing
at all to mark this day as anything out of the ordinary for this part
of the world, which is why it was so surprising to Missus Crouch as
she watched a large piece of meat fall from the sky and land directly in
front of her porch. Now, at this very moment, Missus Crouch just
happened to be on that porch of hers, idling the hours away as she
worked to produce some home made soap. Soon the sound of meat slapping the
ground all around her became almost deafening, as her husband ran outside to see
what was causing the strange noise. Almost as soon as it had started,
the meat shower was all of a sudden over the alarmed couple, initially believing
it to be some kind of sign from God, began inspecting the fallen pieces
of meat. Most of the pieces were around two inches by two inches,
with a few pieces being roughly double that. Word quickly spread throughout the area
of what had occurred on the Crouch farm, and the next day a man
named Harrison Gill arrived at the farm to see for himself. He reported seeing
pieces of meat all across the farm as he had ventured towards the farmhouse,
with pieces strewn across the fields and even hanging from the fences along the perimeter.
There was reportedly so much meat it could have filled more than an entire
horse wagon. Upon first glance, the meat appeared to be beef, but
as these stories always seemed to go, it wasn't long before one of the
visiting neighbors decided to sample a piece or two for themselves and declared rather loudly
that it tasted more like venison or mutton. Another declared it tasted like bear
meat, all of them failing to realize that, by the strangest occurrence of
all, they were now willingly putting mystery sky meat into their mouths. All
this went some way towards ex explaining what of the problem, without at all
answering the questions of how or why. It would take another three months before
the first explanation would come to light. A scientist named Leopold Brandeis had received
some of the meat specimens that had been preserved in glycerine and had begun conducting
his own experiments on it. He soon reached the conclusion that this was not
in fact meat at all. He was wrong, of course, but let's
continue on with this theory for a moment. He proudly announced that this was,
in fact a substance called nostoc. Now, nostoc is a type of
cyanobacteria that clumps together in a rubbery, gelatinous group, and whenever it rains,
it is known to swallow up into a translucent jelly like substance. Because
in its dry form it is so inconspicuous, most people don't notice it until
after a heavy rainfall, whereby people believed it had been carried on the breeze
and fallen from the sky like hail. It had a variety of names such
as star jelly or even witch's butter, and was well known in certain regions.
Or brand Ice believed that this particular nostoc was a flesh colored variety that
could sometimes taste like frog's legs or spring chicken. But one of the glaring
holes in this theory was that it required a heavy rainfall to occur, and
as I mentioned earlier, it was a blue sky day with nothing out of
the ordinary weatherwise. Fortunately, brand Ice was just one of seven scientists who
managed to get their hands on some mystery meat samples to study. Doctor Mead
Edwards returned to the verdict that it was most likely the lung tissue of a
horse, or more disturbingly, that of a human infant. Doctor J.
W. S. Arnold agreed in part that it was a mixture of animal
cartilage and lung tissue. At the end of the day, the overwhelming majority
managed to agree that of the seven samples sent to them, two were lung
tissue, three were muscular tissue, and two were made of cartilage. Armed
with this information, the best and most plausible theory then emerged from doctor L.
D. Castenbein, who wrote in an eighteen seventy six edition of the
Louisville Medical News that this mysterious meat shower had been nothing more than a large,
coordinated bout of projectile vulture vomit. In his report, he said,
the only plausible theory explanation of this anomalous shower appears to me to be that
suggested by an old Ohio farmer, the disgorgement of some vultures that were sailing
over the spot. From their immense height, the particles were scattered by the
prevailing wind over the ground. The variety of tissue discovered, muscular, connective,
fatty, and structureless, can only be explained by this theory. What
does lend weight to this theory is that the only two vulture species that are
found in Kentucky are both known to projectile vomit their entire stomach contents, either
as a defense mechanism or to make themselves light enough for flight if they need
to get airborne in a hurry. The vice president for Field Programs at the
Wildlife Conservation Society, Jar Wolston said, the following meat is heavy. If
you want to take off quickly, or if you startle as a group and
you're carrying a huge amount of weight, the first thing you're going to do
is vomit. Now, the reason this vomiting tends to be a habit amongst
vultures is that their meals are very infrequent, and so when they do find
something to eat, they tend to gorge themselves on it and afterwards need a
fair amount of time to sit and digest it. All. So if something
startles them, vomiting is really their only way of getting away quickly enough,
which is quite disgusting in and of itself, but in fact only comes second
to the grossest part of this episode, which is that if you remember,
there were a whole bunch of people arriving at the Crouch's farm and essentially taking
turns to taste and then critique vulture vomit. This show is made entirely by
me Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music having been made by the Enigma
that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to support the show,
the simplest way to do that is over on our Patreon account. There's just
one option, so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep
producing this show, and in return, you'll get your name forever etched onto
our supporter's Wall of Fame over on our website and then maybe listen out for
your name in an upcoming episode. So until next time, bon apetite ye,