On March 3, 1876, the skies over a quiet Kentucky town opened up—not with rain, not with hail, but with mysterious chunks of raw meat. Dubbed the Kentucky Meat Shower, this bizarre event saw bloody, four-inch slabs of flesh falling from above, covering the farm of Mrs. Crouch, who was just outside making soap when the sky-meat apocalypse began.
Eyewitnesses, being the curious (and possibly reckless) types, tasted the mystery meat, reporting that it had the texture of mutton or venison. But where did it come from?
One scientist in 1876 suggested the meat was lung tissue from either a horse or well you'll see (which, frankly, raises more questions than answers). But today’s leading theory? Vulture vomit. Yep—buzzards probably gorged themselves on some unfortunate carcass, took flight, and then projectile-puked their lunch all over Kentucky.
And if that wasn’t strange enough, you can actually visit a preserved chunk of the Kentucky Meat Shower at a local museum in Bath County, Kentucky.
So there you have it—one of the weirdest events in American history was likely just a flock of startled vultures throwing up all over a farm.
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Brandeis, L. (1876). The Great Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876: Chemical Analysis and Findings.American Journal of Microscopy & Popular Science, 1(3), 100-102.Watson, L. (2000). Supernature: A Natural History of the Unexplained. Hodder & Stoughton.Heuvelmans, B. (1968). On the Track of Unknown Animals. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.
