History knows many examples of strange rains with fish, frogs, earthworms, or even with the inhabitants of the ocean - octopuses and mussels, but what happened in the United States on March 3, 1876 is still a mystery.
On March 3, 1876, large chunks of meat fell from the sky over Olympia Springs in Cut County, Kentucky. This phenomenon happened right outside the house of Allen Crouch, who witnessed the unusual phenomenon.
As Crouch told reporters that day, the sky was completely clear, no clouds or clouds foreshadowing rain. Suddenly, large pieces of meat began to fall from the sky, resembling beef in structure.
Moreover, the locals who fled to the house of Crouch found the moment of "meat rain", when pieces of meat fell from the sky like snowflakes covering everything around. The meat was scattered over a large area, it was lying on the ground, on roofs and hung on fences. Most of the cape pieces were in the range of 5 by 5 centimeters, but there were also large pieces.
The most interesting thing was that the meat was fresh, the pieces were juicy and not rotten. Two local gentlemen even ventured to cook and eat the meat that fell from the sky and, according to them, tasted like venison or lamb. Samples of meat that fell from the sky were collected and stored in glycerin by a local teacher, and three months later, the institute analyzed these samples, but it was not possible to determine the exact identity of the meat.
To appease the God-fearing public, which had already given the name to this phenomenon - "Meat of Witches" and "Miracle in Kentucky", it was announced that this is not meat at all, but a type of cyanobacteria that form colonies, surrounded by a protective gelatinous membrane.
Scientists called this phenomenon "Star Jelly", but their explanation did not calm the local residents at all, since there was no rain that could bring these clots of bacteria that day, and local citizens were certainly able to distinguish meat from some gelatinous mass.
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In the end, samples of this meat were submitted for analysis by an experienced histologist and president of the Newark Scientific Association, Dr. A. Mead Edwards, who said it was probably nothing more than human or horse lung tissue. Another histologist, Dr. JWS Arnold, examined the samples and agreed with Mead, concluding in the American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science that the samples were composed of some sort of animal cartilage and lung tissue.
In the end, seven samples were examined by several scientists, who confirmed that two are lung tissue, three are muscle tissue, and two are cartilage.
This news, as you can understand, did not make the residents of Olympia Springs happy and they believed in the supernaturalness of what happened. Scientists published their version of the reasons for the incident, which said that the cause of the "meat rain" was the vultures, supposedly a whole flock of black vultures or Indian vultures flew over the city, and before that she somewhere, someone so to speak, found and took food with her pro-stock, but something scared them and they threw all their prey, filling the city with pieces of meat.
As you understand, none of the residents saw any flock of vultures or vultures at all at the time of the abnormal rain. Therefore, no one took the statements of scientists seriously, and the secret of this unusual rain remained unsolved …
