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In 1896 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dead ducks, dead woodpeckers and dead catbirds fell from the sky. Scientists believed that the birds had been pushed inland by a storm on the coast off Florida and when the temperature suddenly dropped, the poor creatures had perished. If you think that’s strange, then imagine being in Acapulco in Mexico in October 1968, when a some quite horrible little objects began to rain down from the sky, along with the heavy raindrops. They were 3.5cm long maggots!
Biologist Alan Bajikov and his wife were enjoying breakfast in October 1947, in Marksville, Louisiana, when a strange kind of downpour fell from the sky. From the clouds fell a gentle rain along with a heap of fish, including black bass and minnows! Although a whirlwind could have picked up the fish from the Gulf of Mexico, about 130km away, no tornados had been reported that day.
Can you imagine being Mrs Hiram Winchell of Evansville in Indiana in May 1911 - she got rather a shock when a 61cm long alligator fell from the heavens onto her verandah, and tried to crawl inside her house!
In March 1876 in Kentucky objects the size of snowflakes began to fall from a cloudless sky. The objects seemed to be fresh meat that tasted like mutton or venison. Scientists who tested the objects found that it was actually lung tissue from a human baby or a horse.
In the San Francisco Bay area in October 1977, blobs of white material up to 6.10m in length fell. Pilots in San Jose saw these white blobs as high up as 1,200m in the sky. Although it was believed that the blobs were from migrating spiders, no spiders were ever found.
On a very hot afternoon in France in 1794, there was a very unusual downpour from the sky. Along with an incredible fall of rain, there were also toads and tadpoles. In 30 minutes the area was deluged with water and people found toads hopping everywhere on the ground, and even squirming in their hats.
In Macerata, Italy in 1897 a large number of red clouds filled the sky. When the clouds burst, small seeds rained down from the sky. There were so many seeds that they covered the ground to a depth of almost 1.3cm or ½”. The seeds were found to be from the Judas tree which is usually found in the Middle East and Asia. One would think that if a storm had picked up the seeds from these trees and dumped them in Italy, that there would have been leaves, twigs etc from the trees. But the only thing that rained down were the seeds alone.
There was a tropical storm near Killarney Station in the Northern Territory in February 1974. During the storm about 150 perch-like silver fish fell from the sky. Apparently this is not uncommon and the official belief is that whirlwinds on the oceans cause a waterspout to form that sucks up water as well as fish. Then the storm carries the water and fish a great distance away and drops its load somewhere else.
In the USA in 1961 there was downpour of unripe peaches from the sky.
In January 1935, pink snow covered Durango in Colorado in the USA.
In Haiti in 1786 after a six month drought, a strong wind from the east dropped a huge quantity of black eggs onto the city of Port-au Prince. Some of the eggs were kept in water and hatched the next day. The black eggs contained creatures that resembled tadpoles.
In 1969 at the edge of the Heathrow airport a fine blanket of soot landed over the nearby parkland. Officially the report from the Greater London Council indicated that the soot was actually minute spores of a black microfungus which is found only in New Zealand.
In Brazil in 1971, a rancher had an unusual rainfall on his property. It was not actually rain, it was beans. Authorities suggested that a storm had swept up the beans in West Africa and dropped them in Brazil. The rancher cooked up some of the beans but said that they were too tough to eat.
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