22 Things Which Fell From The Sky (glowing green snow, anyone?)
Finally found the thing on glowing green snow in the book that I swore it wouldn't be in, so here it is... it was also 22 things instead of the ten I thought it was.
Source: Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader (#14), pp. 213-217
(they got it from David Wallechinsky's Book of Lists, which I also loved to read!)
22 Things That Fell From The Sky
1. HAY
A great cloud of hay drifted over the town of Devizes, England, on 3 July 1977. It fell to Earth in handful-size lumps. The sky was otherwise clear and cloudless with a slight breeze. The temperature was 26°C (about 79°F).
2. GOLDEN RAIN
Yellow-colored globules fell over suburban Sydney, Australia, in late 1971. The minister for health, Mr. Jago, blamed it on the excreta on bees, consisting mostly of undigested pollen. However, there were no reports of vast hordes of bees in the area. There was also no real explanation as to why they would choose to excrete en masse over Sydney.
3. BLACK EGGS
On 5 May 1786, after five months of drought, a strong east wind dropped a great quantity of black eggs on the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Some of the eggs were preserved in water and hatched the next day. The beings inside the eggs shed several layers of their skin, and resembled tadpoles.
4. MEAT
The famous Kentucky meat shower took place in southern Bush County on Friday, 3 March 1876. Mrs. Allen Crouch was in her yard making soap when pieces of fresh meat the size of large snowflakes began to fall from the cloudless sky. Two gentlemen who tasted it said that the meat was either mutton or venison. Scientists who examined the material found the first samples to be lung tissue from either a human infant or a horse. Other later samples were identified as cartilage and striated muscle fibers. The local explanation was that a flock of buzzards had disgorged as a group while flying overhead.
5. A 3,902-POUND STONE
The largest meteorite fall in recorded history occurred on 8 March 1976, near the Chinese city of Jilin. Most of the 100 stones that were found weighed over 200 pounds; the largest, which landed in the Haupi Commune, weighed over 3,902 pounds. It is, by more than 1000 pounds, the largest stone meteorite ever recorded.
6. MONEY
On 8 October 1976, a light plane buzzed the Piazza Venezia in Rome and dropped 500-lire, 1000-lire, and 10,000-lire banknotes on the startled people below. The mad bomber was never found.
7. SOOT
A fine blanket of soot landed on a Cranford park on the edge of London's Heathrow Airport in 1969, greatly annoying the local park keepers. The official report of the Greater London Council said the "soot" was composed of spores of a black microfungus, Pithomyces chartarum, found only in New Zealand.
8. HUMAN WASTE
A 25-pound chunk of green ice fell from the sky on 23 April 1978, and landed with a roar and a cloud of smoke near an unused school building in Ripley, Tennessee. The Federal Aviation Administration claimed the green blob was frozen waste from a leaky airplane toilet. These falling blobs are unfortunately quite common: Denver, Colorado, is the centre of such phenomena. At least two Denver families have had ice bombs crash through their roofs. And then there's the story of the unfortunate Kentucky farmer who took a big lick of a flying Popsicle before he discovered what it was.
9. 500 BIRDS
About 500 dead and dying blackbirds and pigeons landed on the streets of San Luis Obispo, California, over a period of several hours in late November 1977. No local spraying had occurred, and no explanation was offered.
10. FIRE
On the evening of 30 May 1869, the horrified citizens of Greiffenberg, Germany, and neighboring villages witnessed a fall of fire. The fall of fire was followed by a tremendous peal of thunder. People who were outside reported that the fire was different in form and color from the common lightning. They said that they felt wrapped in fire and deprived of air for some seconds.
11. WHITE FIBROUS BLOBS
Blobs of white material up to 20 feet in length descended over the San Francisco Bay Area in California on October 11, 1977. Pilots in San Jose encountered them as high as 4,000 feet. Migrating spiders were blamed, although no spiders were recovered.
12. LUMINOUS GREEN SNOW
In April 1953, glowing green snow was encountered near Mount Shasta, California. Mr. and Mrs. Milton Moyer reported that their hands itched after touching it, and that "a blistered, itching rash" formed on their hands, arms, and faces. The Atomic Energy Commission denied any connection between the snow and recent A-bomb tests in nearby Nevada.
13. MYSTERIOUS DOCUMENTS
The 25 July 1973 edition of the Albany, New York, Times Union reported the unusual case of Bob Hill. Hill was the owner of radio station WHRI of North Greenbush, New York. He was taking out the station garbage at 4:15 PM when he noticed "twirling specks" falling from a distance higher than the station's 300-foot transmitter. He followed two of the white objects until they landed in a hay field. The objects turned out to be two sets of formulas and accompanying graphs, which apparently explained "normalized extinction" and the "incomplete Davis-Greenstein orientation." No explanation has been made public.
14. BEANS
Rancher Salvador Targino of Brazil reported a rain of beans on his property in Paraíba State in early 1971. Local agricultural authorities speculated that a storm had swept up a pile of beans in West Africa and dropped them in northeastern Brazil. Targino boiled some of the beans, but said they were too tough to eat.
15. SILVER COINS
Several thousand rubles' worth of silver coins fell in the Gorki region of the USSR on June 17, 1940. The official explanation was that a landslide had uncovered a hidden treasure, which was picked up by a tornado, which dropped it on Gorki. No explanation was given for the fact that the coins were not accompanied by any debris.
16. MUSHROOM-SHAPED THINGS
Traffic at the Mexico City airport was halted temporarily on 30 July 1963, when thousands of grayish mushroom-shaped things floated to the ground out of a cloudless sky. Hundreds of witnesses described these objects variously as "giant cobwebs," "balls of cotton," and "foam." They disintegrated rapidly after landing.
17. TOADS
Falls of frogs and toads are not everyday occurrences... but they are actually quite common, and have been reported in almost every part of the world. One of the most famous toad falls happened in the summer of 1794 in the village of Lalain, France. A very hot afternoon was broken suddenly by such an intense downpour of rain that 150 French soldiers (then fighting the Austrians) were forced to abandon the trench in which they were hiding to avoid being submerged. In the middle of the half-hour storm, tiny toads (mostly in the tadpole stage) began to land on the ground and jump about in all directions. When the rain let up, many soldiers discovered toads in the folds of their three-cornered hats.
18. OAK LEAVES
In late October 1889, a Mr. Wright of the parish of Penpont, Dumfries, Scotland, was startled by the appearance of what at first seemed to be a flock of birds. They began falling to the ground, so he ran toward them. He discovered the objects to be oak leaves, which eventually covered an area one mile wide and two miles long. The nearest clump of oak trees was eight miles away, and no other kind of leaf fell.
19. JUDAS TREE SEEDS
Just before sunset in August 1897, an immense number of small / blood-colored clouds filled the sky in Macerata, Italy. About an hour later, storm clouds burst and small seeds rained from the sky, covering the ground to a depth of half an inch. Many of the seeds had already started to germinate, and all of them were from the Judas tree. The Judas tree is found predominantly in the Middle East and Asia. There was no accompanying debris... just the seeds.
20. FISH
About 150 perchlike silver fish just dropped from the sky during a tropical storm near Killaney Station in Australia's Northern Territory in February 1974. Fish falls are common enough that an "official" explanation has been developed to cover most of them. It is theorized that whirlwinds create a waterspout effect, sucking up water and fish. The whirlwind then carries them for great distances, and then drops them somewhere else.
21. ICE CHUNKS
In February 1965, a 50-pound mass of ice plunged through the roof of the Phillips Petroleum plant in Woods Cross, Utah. In his book Strangest of All, Frank Edwards reports the case of a carpenter working on a roof in Kempten -- near Düsseldorf, Germany -- who was struck and killed in 1951 by an icicle six feet long and six inches around, which shot down from the sky.
22. SPACE JUNK
In September 1962, a metal object about six inches in diameter and weighing 21 pounds crashed into a street intersection in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It burrowed several inches into the ground. The object was later identified as part of Sputnik IV, which had been launched by the USSR on 15 May 1960. Since 1959, more than 6000 parts of spacecraft have fallen out of orbit. Many of them have reached the surface of the Earth. On 11 July 1979, Skylab (the 77-ton US space station) fell out of orbit over the South Indian Ocean and western Australia. The largest piece of debris to reach land was a one-ton fuel tank.
Source: Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader (#14), pp. 213-217
(they got it from David Wallechinsky's Book of Lists, which I also loved to read!)
22 Things That Fell From The Sky
1. HAY
A great cloud of hay drifted over the town of Devizes, England, on 3 July 1977. It fell to Earth in handful-size lumps. The sky was otherwise clear and cloudless with a slight breeze. The temperature was 26°C (about 79°F).
2. GOLDEN RAIN
Yellow-colored globules fell over suburban Sydney, Australia, in late 1971. The minister for health, Mr. Jago, blamed it on the excreta on bees, consisting mostly of undigested pollen. However, there were no reports of vast hordes of bees in the area. There was also no real explanation as to why they would choose to excrete en masse over Sydney.
3. BLACK EGGS
On 5 May 1786, after five months of drought, a strong east wind dropped a great quantity of black eggs on the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Some of the eggs were preserved in water and hatched the next day. The beings inside the eggs shed several layers of their skin, and resembled tadpoles.
4. MEAT
The famous Kentucky meat shower took place in southern Bush County on Friday, 3 March 1876. Mrs. Allen Crouch was in her yard making soap when pieces of fresh meat the size of large snowflakes began to fall from the cloudless sky. Two gentlemen who tasted it said that the meat was either mutton or venison. Scientists who examined the material found the first samples to be lung tissue from either a human infant or a horse. Other later samples were identified as cartilage and striated muscle fibers. The local explanation was that a flock of buzzards had disgorged as a group while flying overhead.
5. A 3,902-POUND STONE
The largest meteorite fall in recorded history occurred on 8 March 1976, near the Chinese city of Jilin. Most of the 100 stones that were found weighed over 200 pounds; the largest, which landed in the Haupi Commune, weighed over 3,902 pounds. It is, by more than 1000 pounds, the largest stone meteorite ever recorded.
6. MONEY
On 8 October 1976, a light plane buzzed the Piazza Venezia in Rome and dropped 500-lire, 1000-lire, and 10,000-lire banknotes on the startled people below. The mad bomber was never found.
7. SOOT
A fine blanket of soot landed on a Cranford park on the edge of London's Heathrow Airport in 1969, greatly annoying the local park keepers. The official report of the Greater London Council said the "soot" was composed of spores of a black microfungus, Pithomyces chartarum, found only in New Zealand.
8. HUMAN WASTE
A 25-pound chunk of green ice fell from the sky on 23 April 1978, and landed with a roar and a cloud of smoke near an unused school building in Ripley, Tennessee. The Federal Aviation Administration claimed the green blob was frozen waste from a leaky airplane toilet. These falling blobs are unfortunately quite common: Denver, Colorado, is the centre of such phenomena. At least two Denver families have had ice bombs crash through their roofs. And then there's the story of the unfortunate Kentucky farmer who took a big lick of a flying Popsicle before he discovered what it was.
9. 500 BIRDS
About 500 dead and dying blackbirds and pigeons landed on the streets of San Luis Obispo, California, over a period of several hours in late November 1977. No local spraying had occurred, and no explanation was offered.
10. FIRE
On the evening of 30 May 1869, the horrified citizens of Greiffenberg, Germany, and neighboring villages witnessed a fall of fire. The fall of fire was followed by a tremendous peal of thunder. People who were outside reported that the fire was different in form and color from the common lightning. They said that they felt wrapped in fire and deprived of air for some seconds.
11. WHITE FIBROUS BLOBS
Blobs of white material up to 20 feet in length descended over the San Francisco Bay Area in California on October 11, 1977. Pilots in San Jose encountered them as high as 4,000 feet. Migrating spiders were blamed, although no spiders were recovered.
12. LUMINOUS GREEN SNOW
In April 1953, glowing green snow was encountered near Mount Shasta, California. Mr. and Mrs. Milton Moyer reported that their hands itched after touching it, and that "a blistered, itching rash" formed on their hands, arms, and faces. The Atomic Energy Commission denied any connection between the snow and recent A-bomb tests in nearby Nevada.
13. MYSTERIOUS DOCUMENTS
The 25 July 1973 edition of the Albany, New York, Times Union reported the unusual case of Bob Hill. Hill was the owner of radio station WHRI of North Greenbush, New York. He was taking out the station garbage at 4:15 PM when he noticed "twirling specks" falling from a distance higher than the station's 300-foot transmitter. He followed two of the white objects until they landed in a hay field. The objects turned out to be two sets of formulas and accompanying graphs, which apparently explained "normalized extinction" and the "incomplete Davis-Greenstein orientation." No explanation has been made public.
14. BEANS
Rancher Salvador Targino of Brazil reported a rain of beans on his property in Paraíba State in early 1971. Local agricultural authorities speculated that a storm had swept up a pile of beans in West Africa and dropped them in northeastern Brazil. Targino boiled some of the beans, but said they were too tough to eat.
15. SILVER COINS
Several thousand rubles' worth of silver coins fell in the Gorki region of the USSR on June 17, 1940. The official explanation was that a landslide had uncovered a hidden treasure, which was picked up by a tornado, which dropped it on Gorki. No explanation was given for the fact that the coins were not accompanied by any debris.
16. MUSHROOM-SHAPED THINGS
Traffic at the Mexico City airport was halted temporarily on 30 July 1963, when thousands of grayish mushroom-shaped things floated to the ground out of a cloudless sky. Hundreds of witnesses described these objects variously as "giant cobwebs," "balls of cotton," and "foam." They disintegrated rapidly after landing.
17. TOADS
Falls of frogs and toads are not everyday occurrences... but they are actually quite common, and have been reported in almost every part of the world. One of the most famous toad falls happened in the summer of 1794 in the village of Lalain, France. A very hot afternoon was broken suddenly by such an intense downpour of rain that 150 French soldiers (then fighting the Austrians) were forced to abandon the trench in which they were hiding to avoid being submerged. In the middle of the half-hour storm, tiny toads (mostly in the tadpole stage) began to land on the ground and jump about in all directions. When the rain let up, many soldiers discovered toads in the folds of their three-cornered hats.
18. OAK LEAVES
In late October 1889, a Mr. Wright of the parish of Penpont, Dumfries, Scotland, was startled by the appearance of what at first seemed to be a flock of birds. They began falling to the ground, so he ran toward them. He discovered the objects to be oak leaves, which eventually covered an area one mile wide and two miles long. The nearest clump of oak trees was eight miles away, and no other kind of leaf fell.
19. JUDAS TREE SEEDS
Just before sunset in August 1897, an immense number of small / blood-colored clouds filled the sky in Macerata, Italy. About an hour later, storm clouds burst and small seeds rained from the sky, covering the ground to a depth of half an inch. Many of the seeds had already started to germinate, and all of them were from the Judas tree. The Judas tree is found predominantly in the Middle East and Asia. There was no accompanying debris... just the seeds.
20. FISH
About 150 perchlike silver fish just dropped from the sky during a tropical storm near Killaney Station in Australia's Northern Territory in February 1974. Fish falls are common enough that an "official" explanation has been developed to cover most of them. It is theorized that whirlwinds create a waterspout effect, sucking up water and fish. The whirlwind then carries them for great distances, and then drops them somewhere else.
21. ICE CHUNKS
In February 1965, a 50-pound mass of ice plunged through the roof of the Phillips Petroleum plant in Woods Cross, Utah. In his book Strangest of All, Frank Edwards reports the case of a carpenter working on a roof in Kempten -- near Düsseldorf, Germany -- who was struck and killed in 1951 by an icicle six feet long and six inches around, which shot down from the sky.
22. SPACE JUNK
In September 1962, a metal object about six inches in diameter and weighing 21 pounds crashed into a street intersection in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It burrowed several inches into the ground. The object was later identified as part of Sputnik IV, which had been launched by the USSR on 15 May 1960. Since 1959, more than 6000 parts of spacecraft have fallen out of orbit. Many of them have reached the surface of the Earth. On 11 July 1979, Skylab (the 77-ton US space station) fell out of orbit over the South Indian Ocean and western Australia. The largest piece of debris to reach land was a one-ton fuel tank.
Labels: australia, bathroom readers, bob, chinese, coinage, david, food, golden, history, india, lists, money, snow, us, war, water, weird stuff
posted by Flami at 1:15:00 AM
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