The falling from the sky of unusual objects is a characteristic feature of the history of paranormal phenomena of the 20th century, and it seems that this happened in almost every country in the world. Since usually only one type of object falls, it is quite difficult to imagine that there are some natural explanations for these riddles.
But if you bring together all the variety of objects that have fallen for all times from the heavenly blue, then it becomes almost impossible to accept any supernatural interpretation.
The first mention of this phenomenon dates back to 77 AD. Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History", mentioning the rains from the frogs, denied their reality, believing that rather frogs crawl out of the ground after heavy rains.
This explanation has satisfied natural scientists for nearly two millennia. Indeed, if, after a heavy rain, earthworms and various types of insects can crawl out of the ground, why should not the frogs do the same?
Of course, the idea that amphibians and fish can live underground, crawling out after the rain, now seems ridiculous. But if frogs do not fall from the sky and do not arise from the soil, where can they come from?
Among the reports of many objects raining down over the past hundred years, we will find apples, chicken eggs (both raw and boiled), money, soot, clods of earth, boiled bacon, various meat products, peas, lumps of coal and limestone, onions, tomatoes (fresh and stewed), nails, human fingers, shellfish, various crustaceans, roasted beans, dry grains, mustard and watercress seeds, corn grains and marbles, pieces of china, red-hot chains, metal bars, golf balls, molten glass, metal pellets, and medium-sized animals including crocodiles, monkeys, and the indispensable cats and dogs.
Most of these things have fallen only once or twice in the past century; some of the messages, of course, are false, but some inanimate objects (of which the most notable are paper money, coins and stones) seem to appear from heaven with some regularity, along with difficult to identify objects, various mucus and dirt.
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Among the falling out living creatures, fish occupy one of the first places. However, the most frequent guests from heaven are - and this is in almost every country - frogs.
On October 24, 1987, two British newspapers, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star, reported that an unnamed elderly lady had shared with the Gloucester Conservation Trust that an unusual rain of pink frogs had spilled over her hometown of Stroud as once during a thunderstorm.
According to the woman, frogs fell on umbrellas and sidewalks and rushed in thousands to streams and gardens, hurrying to hide in them.
Newspapers also informed their readers that pink frogs, similar in description, had visited Cirencester in large numbers two weeks earlier, although no one had reported falling from the sky.
Both newspapers cite the opinion of the naturalist Ian Darling, who examined many of these amphibians. Darling considers them to be a kind of albino tribe, saying that their strange pink color is due to small blood vessels that show through pale skin.
Noticing that just at this time Britain was covered with the red sand of the Sahara, he said that he believed that special air vortices were responsible for the appearance of frogs, which lifted them and carried them thousands of miles.
Other naturalists did not agree with this, and most of the newspapers that announced this story preferred to accept a more "down-to-earth" solution to the problem: namely, whatever frogs the residents of the two towns saw, they simply jumped out of the grass or bushes (which is common the behavior of these amphibians during heavy rains), and that the elderly lady, who claimed to have seen them fall straight from the sky, is too eccentric to be credited with her testimony.
It's no surprise that most people, especially the rational mind, would refuse to discuss such stories. For here we are dealing with a riddle that cannot be explained by the known laws of nature. Why exactly frogs fall more often than other creatures from heaven is impossible to understand, but so much eyewitness accounts have already accumulated that it is no longer possible to present such incidents as simply fabricated.
In his Book of the Damned, Charles Fort has collected dozens of reports of such cases that took place in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Of these, perhaps the most intriguing is the incident that happened after a raging downpour on July 2, 1901 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
As many hundreds of witnesses reported, during the storm, they contemplated the fall of a "huge green mass", which turned into a gigantic number of small frogs and toads in an area of three city blocks, and all these living creatures covered the earth with a layer three to four inches thick, thereby making impossible any movement on the streets.
After Fort's death in 1932, the number of reports increased, although rarely did creatures fall from heaven so abundantly. On July 12, 1954, Englishwoman Sylvia Mouday was one of many witnesses at a fair in Birmingham's Sutton Caulfield park, where shoppers were hit by an eerie shower of little khaki frogs three-quarters of an inch long in a light, ordinary rain.
Frogs bounced over umbrellas and could be seen in the air everywhere, and when Mrs. Moway looked down, she found that the ground was literally covered with a carpet of frightened amphibians, fifty square yards in area.
In 1969, Veronica Papworth, a well-known journalist in England, was one of the eyewitnesses caught in a rain of thousands of frogs that hit the town of Penn in Buckinghamshire. Ten years later, on July 27, 1979, another Englishwoman, Mrs. Vida McWilliam from Bedford, entered the garden after a heavy rain, and found that the ground was covered with small green and black frogs, and their eggs were hanging from the trees and bushes.
Many will dismiss these stories, and nothing makes a naturalist and zoologist frown more quickly than the mention of frog rain. This phenomenon has never been subjected to scientific research, and it is not known whether it will ever be carried out.
Among rationalists who are honest enough not to deny these phenomena, most prefer intelligible explanations, such as those advanced by Ian Darling, namely that animals are lifted into the air in vortexes of air and are thrown elsewhere.
Charles Fort noted this possibility in 1919, but rejected it for a number of reasons.
- It is easy to say that the frogs were picked up by a whirlwind from the pond and after a few kilometers rained down on the heads of passers-by. But then what happened to the dirt, mud, algae? Why did the whirlwind selectively pick up only frogs? In addition, the owner of the pond or residents living nearby would not hesitate to report to the press if some vortex had scooped out its contents and carried it away.
The selective nature of the falls can be explained by the fact that different objects fall out in different places due to differences in their specific gravity and their surface area. By the way, this principle is the basis for the action of a cyclone - a device for vortex deposition of solid particles from air. There is nothing more meaningful to explain.
It is hardly surprising that there were no witnesses of how a whirlwind or tornado sucked out all the living creatures from the pond and carried them away with them. A tornado capable of snatching hundreds of frogs from their habitat can be dangerous for humans.
In other words, people who find themselves in the immediate vicinity of a tornado first of all think about their own safety and look for a reliable refuge for themselves. In the chaos that such a whirlwind can create, hardly anyone will see the fish or frogs flying by.
The destruction caused by such tornadoes usually extends over several kilometers. People are unlikely to pay attention to the disappearance of dozens of frogs from the nearest pond, especially if there are several such ponds and swamps in the district.
Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the reports about the rains of fish and frogs, which themselves happen very rarely, do not mention any twisted ponds in the area.
Researchers believe that in order to pull out several frogs and fish from the water, a real tornado is not required at all, local water or dust vortices are quite enough. They are unlikely to cause serious damage, and in many cases can go unnoticed in sparsely populated areas, especially at night.
Of course, until it is documented that it is tornadoes or vortices that are responsible for the transport of aquatic animals over long distances, the question of the origin of rain from fish and frogs remains open.
However, of all possible explanations (including the levitation of amphibians), the vortexes as the culprit of this natural phenomenon remains the most satisfactory.
It is interesting to note that in early October 1987, which was marked by the fall of amazing pink frogs of an unidentified species on the Gloucester cities of Stroud, Cirencester and Cheltenham, the film "Love Child" was shown in local cinemas. The promotional poster for the film featured pink frogs falling out of the void, and the characters featured gang members called the Pink Frogs. Just a coincidence? Of course - what else ?!