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Strange Falls & Rains Of Objects & Substances

They look very much like the pellets that came with an BB gun I bought a few years ago.
 
Jerry_B said:
Trooper, motorist: Mysterious object fell from sky

LITCHFIELD, Conn. (AP) — Authorities in northwestern Connecticut say they didn't find anything after a state trooper and another person reported a large object falling out of the sky in Litchfield.

The Republican-American of Waterbury reports (http://bit.ly/HEwTYZ ) that a person driving in Litchfield at about 2 a.m. Tuesday reported that a green, glowing object the size of a whale fell from the sky and crashed into Bantam Lake.
Video of the fall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AdLb3GvV6Q ;)
 
As Charles Fort expressed at length in The Book of the Damned, (and has probably been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, but I'm tired) the falls are very selective in every way. Over a selected area, a selected group of objects is spread. If the putative whirlwinds separate the objects according to mass before depositing them, a stratified selections of objects would be found in their wake. Who ever reports seeing fish sucked into a vortex at sea, anyway? In fact, who even reports seeing the whirlwinds speed across the landscape, thousands of perturbed fishes trapped in their gusty tendrils? Why are so many of the fish or frogs alive when they land, after such a trauma? If so many hundreds of frogs can be so surgically relocated by vortices, why are we never occasionally splattered with displaced frogspawn?

The very best explanation I have for reports of falls of fish, frogs, nuts and various other objects, is that originally the press misreported them for the sake of the story. 'Let's report they were found on roofs, so no-one can dismiss them as having dropped from a passing lorry, as was probably the case.' Then, scientists explained the falls away with waterspouts and the like, as is their way, which is a fine hypothesis so long as one "snoopeth not into its exclusions". And now the press continues to misreport, but includes the scientists' taming of the phenomenon.

However, the misreporting of falls of selected objects in this way is hardly a satisfactory way to explain something that has been recorded with consistent details since records have been kept.
 
One of my favourites was the rain of packets of biscuits. It didn't even sound natural!
 
gncxx said:
One of my favourites was the rain of packets of biscuits. It didn't even sound natural!

I don't remember that one.
 
Just looked it up: in 1965 in Louisville, Kentucky a man discovered his back yard and garage roof were sprinkled with bags of cookies. They'd apparently fallen from nowhere with no explanation. Weird, huh?
 
PeteByrdie said:
If the putative whirlwinds separate the objects according to mass before depositing them, a stratified selections of objects would be found in their wake.
Not only mass, but volume and surface area also have to be considered. I'm pretty sure several industrial sorting processes work on similar principles, but I'm too tired to dig up examples! (I expect James Dyson could provide data!)

Who ever reports seeing fish sucked into a vortex at sea, anyway?
I've probably spent more time at sea than most people here, but sea spouts are not common. The nearest one I saw, in 1968, was several miles away. I might have seen a whale at that distance, but not the sort of small fry that end up as fish falls!
 
gncxx said:
Just looked it up: in 1965 in Louisville, Kentucky a man discovered his back yard and garage roof were sprinkled with bags of cookies. They'd apparently fallen from nowhere with no explanation. Weird, huh?

Wasn't 1965 the year a whirlwind passed through Sesame Street?
 
rynner2 said:
PeteByrdie said:
If the putative whirlwinds separate the objects according to mass before depositing them, a stratified selections of objects would be found in their wake.
Not only mass, but volume and surface area also have to be considered. I'm pretty sure several industrial sorting processes work on similar principles, but I'm too tired to dig up examples! (I expect James Dyson could provide data!)

That does make sense, and perhaps that would distribute different types of objects further away. Here's another thought. Wherever these falls come from, they seem most commonly to fall in urban areas. It seems to me, as farmers spend more time covering greater areas of land in a day, they would notice fields full of sticklebacks far more often than people in towns find fish in the street. Again, seems selective.

rynner2 said:
Who ever reports seeing fish sucked into a vortex at sea, anyway?
I've probably spent more time at sea than most people here, but sea spouts are not common. The nearest one I saw, in 1968, was several miles away. I might have seen a whale at that distance, but not the sort of small fry that end up as fish falls!

Well, exactly! And, for my part, I've never seen a waterspout during my jaunts on the Norfolk Broads. So, the case for waterspout-generated fish falls remains wedged firmly open as far as I'm concerned. A convenient but nonsensical way to dismiss a truly weird phenomenon.
 
Vietnam: Officials probe mysterious 'space balls'

Defence officials in Vietnam are investigating the origin of three metal spheres which fell from the sky in the north of the country.

The largest object weighs about 45kg (99lb) and was found near a stream in Tuyen Quang province, the Thanh Nien News website reports. Another orb landed in local resident's garden in the neighbouring Yen Bai region, while the lightest, weighing 250g (9oz), came down on a nearby roof before rolling onto the ground, the website says. Local people reported hearing what sounded like thunder in the minutes before the objects were found.
 
Do they have pawnbrokers in space and don't they burn up on re-entry?
 
On my way to visit my dad who was at that point in the final stages of cancer, so wer were doing a 300 miles round trip every ten days or so (which would up the odds of weird things happening)... I remember it as a dead pigeon splatted on our windscreen. No overhanging trees at that point in the road. I assumed it died mid flight and just happened to be over our car when it happened. This was 10 years ago, now and we still always mention it when we drive past the spot, as it wasn't far from home.

Thing is, my dad was a big sceptic re anything woo, and an agnostic leaning towards atheism - and quite vocal about it his whole life. But staring death in the face he had a deathbed conversion (which didn't convince me for a second). But anyway, we were talking about that and the second before the bird corpse splattered all over our windscreen, I had just said something incredibly irreligious, and blasphemous. Then... SPLAT!

We didn't run into the bird - I know they can be stupid and we have run over quite a few in our time. This literally fell out of the sky.

A couple of months ago, Dad's wife just went into a care home so we unexpectedly got the call to go the 150 miles and pick up the last of his stuff as his house is sold to pay for her care home fees. Anyway, last time ever we will have to drive there and I am waiting by the car on our drive for husband because he's left the car locked and is now in the bog with the keys. I am nervous on motorways so this is stupid o'clock, not long after dawn.

And I look up and realise a shower of pigeon feathers is sprinkling a metre or two in front of me - onto our car windscreen. The telegraph wire above is still vibrating but no bird corpse or predator bird to be seen - he's presumably grabbed a pigeon and is off before I look up. So I see nowt - just this shower of feathers rain on my windscreen. The last time ever we are about to visit my dad's house.

The codicil of my dead birds raining story is that the recent incident made us discuss the one ten years ago (He stopped at a service station to wipe the blood, guts n feathers off the windscreen but there were still feathers everywhere and a bloody smear or several, when we had arrived at dad's. I looked out the window and several of his nosey neighbours were gathered, staring at the bloody car. Anyway, I says to my husband it was a pigeon, the first one (the second definitely was - this was only in September, so I remember). He SWEARS it was a crow.

Blimey. Pigeon was bad enough - but a crow would be somehow worse. I think he has misremembered it, though.

But yes - dead birds at least twice.

The only other thing to fall out of the sky at me was a foot long spanner which fell from scaffolding when I was walking through Leeds, early one morning in the 1980s. Had I been a couple of foot ahead of myself - I wouldn't be here now.
 
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We didn't run into the bird - I know they can be stupid and we have run over quite a few in our time. This literally fell out of the sky
I have a very strange one like this from a few years ago although it wasn't related to anything that was happening at the time. I was cycling along a street in Edinburgh when there was a SPLAT and a pigeon wing fell on to the road. Nothing else. No loose feathers, nothing. Just the wing.

There is clearly something weird going on up there with pigeons. I am minded of Conan Doyle's The Horror of the Heights.
 
I have a very strange one like this from a few years ago although it wasn't related to anything that was happening at the time. I was cycling along a street in Edinburgh when there was a SPLAT and a pigeon wing fell on to the road. Nothing else. No loose feathers, nothing. Just the wing.

There is clearly something weird going on up there with pigeons. I am minded of Conan Doyle's The Horror of the Heights.
Ah yes, we often walk the mutt through some woods that are where they raise golden pheasants for a shoot. Red kites have reappeared round here recently but we have always had a lot of owls. Most evenings we walk through there, there will be similar little flurries of (usually pigeon) feathers, on the track through the woods but no pigeons. Just once, last year, we saw a solitary bird leg lying by the track just before the woods. Once in the woods, were two distraught middle aged walkers. I don't think they were locals, judging by the accents. I wondered why they were upset. "We just found this baby pheasant and it's running round all distraught, on its own."
"Oh I know what that is. I think I just saw its mum in the field there. Well, her leg." I said, and continued my dog walk.

Just remembered - many many years ago I caught the end of some discussion on Radio 4, this woman asking what she had seen two owl legs, still upright, in a hollowed out bit of a tree. Just the legs, mind, no owl. That image has always kind of haunted me.
 
Just remembered - many many years ago I caught the end of some discussion on Radio 4, this woman asking what she had seen two owl legs, still upright, in a hollowed out bit of a tree. Just the legs, mind, no owl. That image has always kind of haunted me.
Eek yes, I see what you mean. :nails:
 
I'm thinking 'birds of prey'. Maybe carving up their prey mid-flight.
 
I'm thinking 'birds of prey'. Maybe carving up their prey mid-flight.

I'm thinking 'killer drones'. No, I'm not really.

Birds of prey tend to take their prey to a safe place to dismember and eat it, although a powerful enough strike from a Peregrine might be enough to dislodge a leg or a wing. Sparrowhawks for instance, eat their prey on the ground and leave just the feet and feathers.
Red Kites and Gulls are scavengers which might pick up a body part and drop it if the are getting harassed by other birds.
 
The Meat Shower, 1876

This old story was new to me! Nowadays we could have used DNA analysis to get more information. I wonder if any samples were preserved?

I do realize that I am answering a 14 year old question, but I just came across this one, and apparently there are samples:

That Time it Rained Flesh in Kentucky

1876, was a beautiful day in Bath County, Kentucky, and a local farmer’s wife, Mrs. Crouch, was outside making soap.

“When the flesh began to fall I saw a large piece strike the ground close by me, with a snapping-like noise when it struck,” Crouch said. “The largest piece that I saw was as long as my hand and about half an inch wide. It looked gristly, as if it had been torn from the throat of some animal. Another piece that I saw was half round in shape and about the size of a half dollar."

Others took it upon themselves to taste it, and two men said it was “either mutton or venison.” A local butcher who tried a piece “declared that it tasted neither like flesh, fish or fowl. It looked to him like mutton, but the smell was a new one.”

With no one able to identify the meat by sight or taste, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported, “a great deal of the flesh was sent to chemists and others in various parts of the country, and analyses were made by several well-known scientists.”

Whatever the meat was and wherever it came from, you can see a bit of it for yourself. The Monroe Moosnick Medical and Science Museum at Transylvania University in Lexington has a preserved piece of meat from the shower in its collection.

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/59487/time-it-rained-flesh-kentucky
 
Not often that a raft comes crashing through your roof. Vid at link.

A Miami woman was left covered in dust and debris after a Canadian air force helicopter dropped an inflatable raft through the roof of her home.

Luce Rameau told the Miami Herald that she was in bed talking on the phone on Wednesday afternoon when she thought she heard a bomb go off.

The next instant she was covered in debris from a hole in her roof created by the uninflated six-man raft.

It had fallen from a Royal Canadian Air Force search-and-rescue helicopter.

The RCAF CH-146 Griffon helicopter was returning to US Coast Guard Air Station Miami in Opa Locka, Florida.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43234170
 
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