In the next installment of Daniel Hurt's Uncommon History series on Sounds Good, Hurt and West Kentucky Community & Technical College's associate professor of history, Brent Taylor, discuss an unusual weather phenomenon that occurred in a central Kentucky community over a century ago: meat falling from the sky like rain. According to Taylor, the extraordinary event perplexed the community and made national headlines. “It was one of these things where you might be walking along on a perfectly pleasant day, and you feel moisture from nowhere on you, and you wonder, how is this even possible? And then this turned into kind of a giant mystery,” says Taylor.
An account of this event published in the Bath County News was picked up by the New York Times in 1876. “Last Friday, a shower of meat fell near the house of Alan Crouch, who lives some two or three miles from the Olympian springs, covering a strip of ground about 100 yards in length and 50 wide. Mrs. Crouch was out in the yard at the time, engaged in making soap, when meat, which looked like beef, began to fall all around her. The sky was perfectly clear at the time. And she said it was like large snowflakes, the pieces as a general thing not being much larger. One piece fell near her, which was three or four inches square,” says the story.
The community, perhaps out of curiosity, decided to inspect and even taste the particles of what appeared to be meat that rained from the heavens.
“Mrs. Harrison Gil, whose veracity is unquestionable, and from whom we obtained the above facts, hearing of the occurrence visited by the locality the next day, says he saw particles of meat sticking to the fences and scattered all over the ground. The meat, when it first fell, appeared to be perfectly fresh. Two gentlemen who tasted the meat expressed the opinion that it was either mutton or venison,” the New York Times story continued.
There were many explanations made for the phenomenon, but according to Taylor, one prevailing theory, which has not been scientifically verified, is that it is related to a gag reflex in birds like vultures who eat dead animals.
“The idea is that they eat something and then fly off, but if the bird doesn’t like the food or it makes them sick, they vomit it up, and when one does it, they all do it, I suppose because they do not want to be sick either,” Taylor explains. “And if you are walking around underneath all that, it might appear to be raining meat.”
According to Professor Taylor, it is a more common phenomenon than people may realize, but something that is not recorded on such a large scale as it was in Bath County back in 1876. “It was picked up by national media because it was certainly out of the ordinary. If, in our modern era of news, the story was about the sky raining meat, it would be just as sensational,” Taylor concludes.
