Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Cosmic Meat: Kentucky Meat Shower


Some really weird things happen sometimes. Take the Kentucky Meat Shower for example, it was a rather odd occurrence.

On 3rd March 1876 in Olympia Springs, Kentucky, for several minutes, a large amount of red meat fell from the sky. It landed in an area 300 by 150 feet, falling in rather large chunks. A mystery. How could meat simply fall from the sky?

According to the locals at the time, the meat resembled beef but when eaten (of course they ate some of it) it apparently tasted of venison or mutton. What was this mysterious meat?

Leopold Brandels identified the meat as Nostoc, a type of bacteria which is found in soil and swells into a jelly-like mass after rain, leading to the belief that it fell with the rain itself. Mystery solved? Apparently not.

Brandels passed the sample to the Newark Scientific Association who further analysed the meat. Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton identified the meat as being lung tissue, either from a horse or from a human infant (who apparently have very similar lungs). Further analysis confirmed the lung tissue identification with other samples being verified as lung and muscle tissue as well as cartilage samples.

The Nostoc theory of Brandels would have been the most plausible with other instances of weird, unidentified matter falling from the sky being in fact swollen bacterial colonies. Unfortunately for us the analysis raises as many questions as it answered. How did the lung tissue of a horse, or worse, and human infant end up falling from the sky in sleepy 19th century Kentucky?

Nostoc: Where's The Beef?

There are no firm explanations but the leading theory is that of a pack of buzzards flew over the area after feasting on several recently dead horses, with one of them spontaneously vomiting the horse remains from the sky. Apparently buzzards tend to follow suit with such behaviour, explaining the large amount of horse meat raining down as well as the area covered by the event.

Less realistic, and therefore more amusing, explanations includes the theory by William Livingston Alden of cosmic meat floating in space, falling to earth like meteorites. Personally I am not sure how serious he was with this suggestion, but I hope he was sincere.

Bacteria would have explained everything so easily, but sadly the world is often more bizarre. Buzzards or Space Meat, who are we to know? Either way, we can take solace in the knowledge that it tasted pretty reasonable to the residents of Olympia Springs.

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