.png)
In many parts of the world, frogs and toads have also fallen numerous times and in monstrous numbers; and so have winkles, worms, and snakes. Blood has been seen dribbling or pouring from the sky, beans and grains fall, and so do meat, muscle, and fat, as though granaries and abattoirs sailed invisibly overhead.
Reports of these and many other kinds of skyfall are included in this content. They range in believability from the more or less acceptable to the downright incredible. And at the farther end of this spectrum are events that may well belong to another category of the unexplained
You could find some strange topics in the next contents on here the ''DAILY STRANGE''. For example, non-meteoritic stones may be conceived to fall from the sky, perhaps ejected by a volcano or gathered by a whirlwind. That such falls of stones should repeatedly descend on the same two adjacent roofs (as they did at Chico, California, in 1921 and 1922) begins to stretch the imagination; and that some stone showers should single out and pursue certain people (two fishermen were such victims in 1973) is already beyond belief. But that stones should fall from undamaged ceilings in closed rooms or inside a closed tent (the victim here was an Australian farm handin1957) removes such incidents from the material realm to the realm of poltergeists...
Perhaps the earliest record of a mysterious—or miraculous - fall from the sky occurs in Chapter 10, Verse 11, of the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament. The Israelites, led by Joshua, have routed the Amorite army in a surprise night attack and are in hot pursuit:
And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the Lord threw down great stones from heaven upon them as far as Azekah, and they died; there were more who died because of the hailstones than the men of Israel killed with the sword.
Two verses after this, incidentally, one of the most astonishing events in the Old Testament is described: the sun stands still until the Israelites have avenged themselves.
Whatever the explanation of this maybe, we shall find many accounts in later centuries of motionless, bright, aerial disks.
A less explicit reference to aerial intervention on behalf of the Israelites occurs in the Book of judges, Chapter 5, Verse 4:
Lord, when thou didst go forth from Seir when thou didst march from the region of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped yea, the clouds dropped water.
Whatever “the heavens dropped” may mean, it seems to refer to something other than rainfall, since the next clause describes that, explicitly, as an additional event. The next mention of heaven appears in Verse 20:
From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera.
In the First Book of Samuel, Chapter 7, Verses 10-12, the Lord again intervenes on behalf of the Israelites
As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel; but the Lord thundered with a mighty voice that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were routed before Israel. And the men of Israel... pursued the Philistines, and smote them, as far as below Beth-car. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Hitherto the Lord has helped us.
In Hebrew, the words eben ezer mean “stone of help.”
The Deipnosophistae (Banquet of the Sophists): Fall of fish and a spectacular deluge of frogs
The records of ancient skyfalls are less numerous than modern accounts but are comparably diverse. The Greek historian Athenaeus, for example, refers to a three-day fall of fish and a spectacular deluge of frogs in his historical anthology, the Deipnosophistae (“Banquet of the Sophists”), written about A.D. 200:
I also know that it has very often rained fishes. At all events Phenias, in the second book of his Eresian Magistrates, says that in the Chersonesus [the word means simply “peninsula” in Greek, and the exact locality referred to is uncertain] it once rained fish uninterruptedly for three days; and Phylarchus in his fourth book, says that people had often seen it raining fish, and often also raining wheat, and that the same thing had happened with respect to frogs. At all events, Heraclides Lembus, in the 21st book of his History, says: “In Paeonia and Dardania it has, they say, before now rained frogs; and so great has been the number of these frogs that the houses and the roads have been full of them; and at first, for some days, the inhabitants, endeavoring to kill them, and shutting up their houses, endured the pest; but when they did no good, but found that all their vessels were filled with them, and the frogs were found to be boiled up and roasted with everything they ate, and when besides all this, they could not make use of any water, nor put their feet on the ground for the heaps of frogs that were everywhere, and were annoyed also by the smell of those that died, they fled the country.''
Accounts of fish, grain, and frogs will be found in more recent history, but the closest approximation of the plague of frogs in Paeonia and Dardani occurs in the biblical account of the second plague in Egypt, the plague of frogs (Exodus 8:1 - 14) :
The skyfall recorded in the Book of Joshua is illustrated here. Great stones cast down from heaven upon the Amorites forced them to flee before the Israelite army. Many of the soldiers were killed by the stones.
The Lord Said: I will plague all your country with frogs; the Nile shall swarm with frogs which shall come up into your house, and into your bed chamber and on your bed, and into the houses of your servants and of your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls ... and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt... And they gathered them together in heaps and the land stank.
The Book of Exodus, Chapter 9, Verses 18-34, records deadly hail, and fire mingled with the hail, as the seventh plague of Egypt.
Ancient historians, including Procopius, Marcellinus, and Theophanes, record a fall of black dust in the year 472 b.c., during which the sky seemed to be on fire. The location of the fall is uncertain but may have been Constantinople.
During the reign of Charlemagne (ninth century a.d.) an enormous block of ice, 990 cubic feet of it, fell from the sky. (Camille Flammarion, The Atmosphere, p.398)
A burning object fell into Lake Van, Armenia, in a.d. 1110, turning the waters red. In the first plague of Egypt, the Nile turned to blood (Exodus 7:15-24).
Comments