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Can it really rain frogs?

When frogs fell from the sky in the book of Exodus, it was a sign of deep, deep trouble for biblical Egypt. And that was only plague No. 2 out of 10. If you've ever woken up to a few inches of frog carpet outside your door, you know it's not­ a pretty picture.

Of course, you probably haven't woken up to such a grisly scene. You probably haven't been driving around in a storm and had your car pelted with what you thought was hail but turned out to be frozen frogs. But other people have. While it's not the most common weather phenomenon in the world, it's not as rare as you might think. It happens all over the world, at least since the first century A.D. -- when the Roman naturalist known as Pliny the Elder described the event -- and as recently as 2005 in Serbia.
You might hear a report of raining frogs -- and other unexpected objects, some not even organic -- at least once a decade or so. Amphibious rain seems to be picking up in frequency. In the last 20 years, newspapers have found more opportunities than ever to write about frogs falling from the sky. For unknown reasons, Britain appears to be especially susceptible in recent years. The cause of frog rain in general is less mysterious, although still a bit of a brow-furrower at times. It's also just as gross as many of us imagine. That final scene in the 1999 film "Magnolia," which left most movie goers jaw-droppingly disgusted and a little impressed, is apparently a pretty accurate portrayal of the phenomenon, according to newspaper accounts.
In this article, we'll find out what's actually going on when frogs rain down and what happens when they fall from the sky. Incidentally, frogs aren't the most common creatures to accompany rain. You'll understand why when we look at the process of frog rain on the next page.But our first question is the most obvious one: How in the world do the frogs get up in the sky in the first place?

Frog Rain Causes: The Flight of the Amphibians

It's hard to get a good mental picture of frog­ rain that doesn't have Moses standing off in the distance. The biblical image of a slimy, surprising hail is tough to avoid. However, there's act­ually a pretty simple explanation for the whole thing: It involves whirlwinds and low-weight creatures­.
­­­­Frogs can weigh as little as a few ounces. But even the heavier ones are no match for a watery tornado, or a waterspout, as it's called when a whirlwind picks up water. The series of events that can lead to frog rain go something like this:
­­­A small tornado forms over a body of water. This type of tornado is called a waterspout, and it's usually sparked by the high-pressure system preceding a severe thunderstorm.­
As with a land-based tornado, the center of the waterspout is a low-pressure tunnel within a high-pressure cone. This is why it picks up the relatively low-weight items in its path -- cows,­ trailer homes and cars get sucked up into the vacuum of the vortex. But since a waterspout is over water and not land, it's not automobiles that end up caught in its swirling winds: it's water and sea creatures. ­
The waterspout sucks up the lower-weight items in the body of water as it m­oves across it. Frogs are fairly lightweight. They end up in the vortex, which continues to move across the water with the high-pressure storm clouds. When a particularly powerful storm hits land, the waterspout might go with it.When the storm hits land, it loses some of its energy and slows down. The pressure drops. Eventually, the clouds release the water they're carrying. As the rain falls, the vortex eventually loses all the pressure that's keeping it going, and it releases whatever it has picked up in its travels. Sometimes, this cargo includes frogs.­The end result is frog rain. Sometimes it's a few dozen frogs -- or a couple hundred or even thousands.

The Mystery Airship of 1896

Eighteen ninety-six was marked by a strange occurrence, an amazing phenomenon that those that saw it probably never forgot. People, by the thousands, living across North America, from San Francisco to Chicago, observed strange lights in the sky. The lights, reportedly an airship, crossed the continent from west to east while the country watched.

The excitement started on November 17, 1896 in Sacramento, California. It was a rainy, dismal night. Then, through the dark clouds, appeared a bright light. It moved slowly west appearing to be about a thousand feet above the rooftops. Hundreds of people saw the light including George Scott, an assistant to the Secretary of State of California. Scott persuaded some friends to join him on the observation deck above the capitol dome and from there they thought they could see three lights, not one. Above the lights was a dark, oblong shape.

The most detailed report of the evening came from one R.L. Lowery, a former street railway employee who said he heard a voice from above call, "Throw her up higher; she'll hit the steeple." When he looked up he saw two men seated on a bicycle-like frame, peddling. Above them was a "cigar-shaped body of some length." Lowery said that the thing also had "wheels at the side like the side wheels on Fulton's old steam boat."

The story was in the newspapers the next day :

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CLAIM THEY SAW A FLYING AIRSHIP

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Strange Tale of Sacramento Men Not Addicted to Prevarication

Viewed an Aerial Courser as it Passes Over the City at Night.

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What Was it?

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The title "airship" soon stuck. Other papers were more reserved and reported a "mysterious light" or "wandering apparition." A few ridiculed the stories suggesting that the whole thing had been a hoax or the result of a natural effect like glowing swamp gas. The story soon faded.

An eyewitness sketch of the "airship" over Sacramento on November 17, 1896.

Then, five days after its first appearance, the "airship" came back.

It was Sunday night and weather conditions were as before: dark and overcast. The light appeared from the northwest and when straight over the town, running against the wind. One witness, Jacob Zemansky, had a small telescope and reported the lamp was "an electric arc light of intense power." He also observed that the light didn't move in a straight line, but seemed to bob in the wind up and down. Another witness with field glasses, Edward Carragher, reported seeing a dark body above the light.

It took thirty minutes for the thing to cross the city and disappear to the southwest. During this time thousands of people observed it including the city's deputy sheriff and a district attorney.

That same night the "airship" also appeared above San Francisco some 90 miles away. There it was observed by hundreds, including the mayor. It cruised as far as the Pacific Ocean, above the famous Cliff House, where its searchlight, a beam that stretched out over 500 feet, reportedly frightened the seals on Seal Rock sending them plunging into the safety of the sea.

Over the next few days airship sightings were made not just in California, but from as far away as Washington State and Canada. The newspapers went wild, some supporting the idea of an airship, some ridiculing it. Stories began to suggest that the airship was the work of a mysterious inventor who was testing his device at night lest his ideas be stolen. This didn't seem outrageous to most people. Balloons capable of carrying people had been around for almost a hundred years and it seemed that the key to powered flight might soon be discovered.

One San Francisco attorney, nicknamed "Airship" Collins, claimed that he was representing the eccentric and wealthy inventor who had constructed the thing at a secret location in Oroville, just sixty miles north of Sacramento. According to Collins the airship was 150 feet long, and could carry 15 passengers. "It was built on the aeroplane system and has two canvas wings 18 feet wide and a rudder shaped like a bird's tail," he told people, "I saw the thing ascend about 90 feet under perfect control." When the mysterious inventor never appeared Collins found himself the object of ridicule and he backed off his earlier claims.

Another San Francisco attorney took his place, though, claiming that there was not one airship, but two, and they would be used to bomb Havana. William Henry Hart, a former attorney general, stated, "From what I have seen of it I have not the least doubt that it will carry four men and 1,000 pounds of dynamite." Hart's airship never was made public either and by early December the lawyer, as well as the lights in the sky, had disappeared from the scene.

Everything was quiet for two months. Then, on February 2, 1897, the "airship" showed itself over the town of Hastings, Nebraska. On February 5th it was seen forty miles further south near the town of Invale. Reports started to flow in from all over the state. On February 16th it was sighted over Omaha. More stories appeared. A farmer claimed he'd encountered the airship on the ground, under repair. "It is cigar shaped, about 200 feet long and 50 feet across at the widest point, gradually narrowing to a point at both ends," the farmer said.

Soon the airship had been sighted all over the mid-west including in Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. More stories about encounters with the crew on the ground appeared. Finally in April the excitement reached it's zenith when the "airship" arrived in Chicago. On April 11th a photograph of the thing was reportedly taken, probably the first UFO photo in existence. Some experts pronounced the photo to be fake.

On April 15, near Kalamazoo, Michigan, there were reports that the airship had crashed and exploded. "They declare the report to have been like that of heavy ordnance and to have been immediately succeeded by a distant sound of projectiles flying through the air," a newspaper story proclaimed.

Despite this, airship sightings continued for a few more days. Some expected the thing to continue on to the east coast, but instead reports about it suddenly faded and by the end of April the flap was over.

So what was it? What was this thing that had apparently been seen by thousands of people across the west and mid-west? There were no airplanes then. The Wight Brothers didn't make their first, short flight till 1903. Neither did a working model of a powered dirigible, which airship descriptions most closely resemble, exist.

One likely culprit is the planet Venus. At the time the sightings started it was prominent in the sky. When the sightings stopped it was becoming increasingly less visible. Venus is the brightest object in the sky, except for the Sun and Moon, and under unusual atmospheric conditions can appear to move, blink, or look like multiple colored lights. It well may have been responsible for many of the reports.

What about the many stories with people meeting the crew or seeing the airship crash? It's hard for us to imagine, in our day and age of radio and television, how much a part of 19th century entertainment centered on the tall tale and the hoax. Journalistic hoaxes, even in the largest newspapers, were standard fare. Readers were expected to guess about which stories were true and which were fictional. Almost every small town had a "lair club" where tall tales were swapped. (Alexander Hamilton's famous "Cownapping" story came out of the airship flap). As a result of these two institutions almost any unusual tale in a 19th century newspaper can be in doubt.

In addition, as today, practical jokers did not hesitate to send balloons lighted with candles into the sky, or kites with lanterns, if they thought they could put one over on the public. Others may have created "crash" sites complete with debris. One newspaper, the Peoria Transcript, sent up lighted, colored, paper balloons to "test" people's imaginations. A number of "airship" sightings was the result.

So if we remove the misidentifications and hoaxes from the airship phenomenon is there anything left? Could it have been an extra-terrestrial spaceship? One of the most striking things about the airship flap was that almost none of the stories surrounding it have anything to do with extra-terrestial beings. (The story of a crash of a Mars airship at Aurora, Texas, was an exception). The airship was piloted by "plain" Americans and designed by the human mystery inventor.

So what about the final possibility? Was there really a mysterious inventor who secretly built an airship and flew it around the country? Certainly the public had been primed to accept such a story. Science fiction in this era often used the "mystery inventor" as a character. Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea featured a mystery inventor, Captain Nemo, who constructed a submarine. Verne's later book, Robur the Conqueror, featured a mystery inventor that built an airship and the similarities between the book and some of the airship stories are uncanny. Robur was published about ten years before the wave of airship sightings.

If there was a real airship genius why didn't he ever make his invention public? Could he have really kept the construction of a flying machine out of the press? Was he really ten years ahead of his contemporary inventors?

If he did exist he certainly was successful in hiding his secret. It remains unknown even today.

Creative Photos

These photos have been taken by Chema Madoz

Lincoln - Kennedy coincidences

1) Lincoln was elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960, 100 years apart
2) Both men were deeply involved in civil rights for African Americans.
3) Both men were assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of their wives.
4) Each wife had lost a child while living at the White House.
5) Both men were killed by a bullet that entered the head from behind.
6) Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theater. Kennedy met his death while riding in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company.
7) Both men were succeeded by vice-presidents named Johnson who were southern Democrats and former senators.
8) Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908, exactly one hundred years later.
9) The first name of Lincoln's private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy's private secretary was Lincoln.
10) John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839 [according to some sources] Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939, one hundred years later.
11) Both assassins were Southerners who held extremist views.
12) Both assassins were murdered before they could be brought to trial.
13) Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater.
14) LlNCOLN and KENNEDY each has 7 letters.
15) ANDREW JOHNSON and LYNDON JOHNSON each has 13 letters.
16) JOHN WlLKES BOOTH and LEE HARVEY OSWALD each has 15 letters.
17) A Licoln staffer Miss Kennedy told him not to go to the Theater. A Kennedy staffer Miss Lincoln, told him not to go to Dallas.

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As I have written before, this blogger does not have any links with Absolut Vodka, these pictures have been posted just for their aesthetic value. The blogger does not endorse alcohol consumption as it is injurious to health.