Kentucky museum displays piece of meat that fell from sky during freaky meat shower

On March 3, 1876, a Mrs. Crouch of Bath County, Kentucky noticed something strange falling from the sky just outside her house. Upon closer inspection, she determined that chunks of red meat were raining from above. The so-called Kentucky Meat Shower has confounded residents of the region, scientists, and the generally curious ever since. Now, a hunk of the meat—preserved for the ages—is on display as part of an exhibit at the Bath County History Museum. Video below.

Of course, unusual things falling from the sky, like fish or frogs, were a favorite topic in the books of Charles Fort (1874-1932), "collector" of anomalous phenomena who greatly influenced my own appreciation for high weirdness. Fort even included the Kentucky Fish Fall in his first volume, The Book of the Damned,

So what the hell was it that rained on Mrs. Crouch?

"The meat appeared to be beef, but according to the first report in Scientific American, two men who tasted it judged it to be lamb or deer," states Wikipedia. "Writing in the Sanitarian, Leopold Brandeis identified the substance as Nostoc, a type of cyanobacteria. Brandeis gave the meat sample to the Newark Scientific Association for further analysis, leading to a letter from Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton appearing in the Medical Record and stating the meat had been identified as lung tissue from either a horse or a human infant, 'the structure of the organ in these two cases being almost identical.'"

Of course, whatever kind of meat it was doesn't explain why it fell from the sky. A common theory is that it was simply vulture vomit.