We expect rain,snow,sleet, and hail to fall from the sky. But when fish,frogs,stones, and other unlikerly objects fall, we are dealing with other celestial phenomina. Foremost in the realm of aerial mysteries are the thousands of sightings of unidentified flying objects. These have been so widely publicized that, to the minds eye, their saucerlike profile is as familiar as the shape of conventional aircraft. There are also many astronomical and atmospheric oddities, including strange sounds, that seem to defy explanation in spite of the proliferation of techniques and instruments designed to interpret such phenomina.
STRANGE THINGS FROM ABOVE
Each year at ther beginning of the rainy season, the people of Yoro, Honduras, gather buckets, barrels, pails, and nets in anticipation of fish that will fall from the sky.And each year, for as long as anybody can remember, sardined have fallen by the barrelful. The "shower of fish" as the natives call it, generally starts around 4 or 5 pm, and is followed by electric storms and strong winds. The fish are left alive and jumping on a grassy plain southwest of the town.
In 1833 lumps of a woollike substance decended on miles of countryside near the french village of Montussan; elswhere, swaths of silk like material and billowing threads have fallen, as though from a vast ariel haberdashers warehouse.
In many parts of the world, frogs and toads have also fallen numerouse times and in monstrous numbers, and so have winkles, worms, and snakes. Blood has been seen dribbling or pouring from the sky, beans and grains fall, and so do meat, muscle, and gfat,as though granaries and abattoirs sailed invisibly overhead.
They range in believability from the more or less acceptable to the downright incredible. And at the farther end of this spectrum are events that may well belong to another category of the unexplained.
For example, nonmeteoric stones may be conconceived to fall from the sky,perhaps ejected by a volcano or gathered up by a whirlwind. That such falls of stones should repeatedly decend upn the same to adjacent roofs (as they did at Chico,California, in 1921 and 1922) begins to stretch the imagination, and that some stone showers should single out and persue certain people (two fisherman were such victims in 1973) is already beyond belief. But that stones should fall from undamaged ceilings in closed rooms or inside a closed tent(the victim here was an australian farmhand in 1957) removes such incidences from the material realm to the realm of poltergeists.
Before 1600
Perhaps the earliest record of a mysterious - or miraculous - fall from the sky occures in Chapter 10,verse 11, of the book of Joshua in the old testament. The Israelites, led by Joshua , have routed the Amorite army in a surprise night attack and are in hot persuit.
"And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the lord threw down great stones from heaven upon them as far Azekah, and they died;there were more who died because of the hailstorms then the men of Isreal killed with the sword".
Two versus after this , incidentally one of the most astonishing events in the old testament is described: The sun stands still until the Israelites have avenged themselves.
Whatever the explanation of this may be , we shall find many accounts in later centuries of mtionless , bright, aerial disks.
A less explicit reference to aerial intervention on behalf of the Isrealites occures in the book of Judges. Chapter 5 verse 4: "Lord, when thou didst go forth from Seir , when thou didst march from the region of Edom, the Earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, yea, the clods dropped water".
Whatever "the heavens dropped" may mean, it seems to refer to something other then rainfal, since the next clause describes that, explicitly, as an additional event.The next mention of heaven appears in verse 20: "From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera."
Ancient Historians , including Procopius , Marcellinus, and Theophanes , record a fall of black dust in the year 472 B.C., during which the sky seemed to be on fire. The location of the fall is uncertain but may have been Constantinople.
During the reign of Charlemagne(ninth century A.D) an enormous block of ice, 990 cubic feet of it, fell from the sky.(Camille Flammarion, The Atmosphere,p398)
A burning object fell into Lake Van , Armenia, in A.D. 1110, turning the waters red. In the first plaque of Egypt the Nile turned to blood. (Exodus 7:15-24)
Most falls from the sky recorded in ancient times have modern parallels, but a few are unique. There is for example no recent counterpart of the Fall of large yellow mice that occured in Bergen, Norway, in 1578 or the lemmings that fell there in 1579.( The journal of cycle research, 6:3, January 1957)
From 1640 to 1700
In June 1642,, lumps of burnng sulfur, the size of a mans fist, fell from the sky onto the roof of Loburg Castle , 18 miles from Magdeburg, Germany. (Reprt of the fourty-fourth meeting of the british assciation for the advancement of science , 1874, P. 272)
A luminous meteor was een to fall in italy in 1652 and near its landing place "Star jelly" was found. (Annals of philosophy, New Series, 12:93, august 1826.)
A fibrous substance resembling blue silk fell in great quantities at Naumburg, Germany (southwest of Leipzig), on march 23, 1665. (Annals of Philosophy, New Series 12:93, august 1826)
Seeds of Ivy berries were found inside hailstones that fell on Wiltshire , England, in 1687. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 16:281, January-March 1687)
Flakes of coal-black fibrous material, some as large as tabletops, fell on newly fallen snow near the town of Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuania) on the east coast of the Baltic sea about 1687. The flakes were damp, smelled of rotten seaweed, and tore like paper;once dry,they were odor free. Some of this material was preserved for 150 years ; when it was finally examined, it was found to consist patrly of "vegetable matter, chiefly Conferva crispata [a threadlike green algae], and partly of about 29 species of infusoria [protozoans, minute aquatic animals]". (Proceedings of The Royal Irish Acadamy, 1:381, december 9, 1839)
A foul smelling substance, the consistency of butter, fell over large areas of southern Ireland in the winter and spring of 1696. According to the Bishop of Cloyne, this "stinking dew" fell in "lumps often as big as the end of ones finger:, it was "soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow color", the cattle in feild were it fell continued to feed as usual. According to Mr. Robert Vans of Kilkenny, the local people believed the "butter" useful medicine and collected it in pots and pans. (Philosphical transactions of the royal society of London, 19:224, 25. March-May 1696.)
On May 5, 1786, the last day of a drought that had lasted since the previous November , "a great quantity" of black eggs fell on Port-au-Haiti. They hatched the next day , and some of these strange animals from the sky were preserved in a flask of water. The creatures shed there skin several times and resembled tadpoles.(Moreau de Saint-Mery, A Naturalists Soujorn in Jamaica)