Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Kentucky Meat Shower

Transcript

Short Stuff: Kentucky Meat Shower · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jeers here too for Dave. So this
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is short stuff.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: That's right, A rare episode where the title itself is
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: a band name. Not a good one though, No.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe horror Bluegrass like a Bluegrass Misfits cover band.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe Yeah, Kentucky meat Shower, I could see that.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I want to shout out Ben Fisher, who is a
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: listener who wrote in a while back to suggest this one.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: So thanks Ben, Oh Ben, has that band registered? Is
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: a trademark?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Also hat tip to mental floss ifl Science, Scientific American,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: The Lexington, Kentucky Herald Leader, and Atlas Obscura Atlas Obscure
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: great sights. But yes, the had you heard of the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Kentucky Meatchower before this, Chuck? Because I did. I didn't.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I hadn't. I'm just going to come out and say
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it as badly as I want to say, like, of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: course i'd heard this, I had not heard of it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: No, I think this is fairly ourcane.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, kid, you just made me feel a lot better. Yeah,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about we should probably get around to saying,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: is the Kentucky meat shower took place just over one
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago. We just missed the anniversary
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: by two days. On March third, eighteen seventy six, a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Hope Stutter named Rebecca Crouch was outside her Well homestead
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: making soap with her grandson Alan when it began to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: rain meat down on them.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: That's right, we should point out because this will come
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: up later. That was a clear sky, so it wasn't
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: like it was rainy. And also meat came down right,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: good point. This was just meat that came down, and
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: they were landing all over the yard, and over the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: course of a few minutes it rained down over the
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: size of about a football field on her farm, these
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: smallish chunks of meat everywhere, even though she said one
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: of them was about the size of her palm, but
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: most of them were smaller than that.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you could compare them to snowflakes. I think
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: it was the general idea I got. And so obviously,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: as you would do if meat was raining on you,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: missus Crouch and grandson Alan went indoors. The livestock and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the cat came to the yard instead, because they were like,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of meat. All of a sudden everywhere
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in the yard. So we're gonna start eating it. And
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: as much as they tried, they couldn't eat at all,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: because before I think, like the next day, a man
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: named Harrison gil He was the first sighted witness to
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: verify that, yes, there was meat all over their yard.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It was stuck to the fence. Mental floss put it
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: that the fences were flecked with tissue and stained with
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: what looked like blood. Thorny briars bore gobs of flesh
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: like Christmas trees from hell.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: You know. A second again, when I thought very seriously
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: that you were going to say, they did what you
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: would do, and they went inside, and I thought you
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: were going to say, and got some hot dog buns. Gross, gross,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: But thank god you didn't, because that's gross. And all
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: this stuff is gross because this was not just regular meat.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It's not like there were little pieces of tinderlin falling
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: from the sky. There was a local butcher named Frizz Frisbee,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: believe it or not. Who of course he's the butcher.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So he's like, sure, I'll try it. So he put
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: it in his mouth, he spit it out. And this
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: was the butcher, and he said he spit it out
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: after chewing it a little, and he said it had
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: kind of a milky, watery fluid oozing out of it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: And other people also verified that it was oozy and
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: also described it as like a brown mucus, similar in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: appearance to veal or mutton. But it was awful smelling
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: and tasting.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't like it tastes like veal or mutton.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: They just said it kind of looks like cooked veel
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: er mutton. There was a guy who apparently found all
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: this quite enticing. He was a neighbor named Eli Willis.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: He scooped up like a handful of stuff and took
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: it home to cook for dinner, and his family, of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: being more sensible than he realized that he was going
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to do this, tried to talk him out of it,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: found they couldn't, and so some family members held him
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: down while other family members scooped up the meet and
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: ran outside and threw it away in a place he
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't find it.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: That all smacks of eighteen seventies news reporting, doesn't it.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It definitely does, But that also smacks of twenty twenty
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: six podcast re reporting.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break, I think we should sure, all.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Right, we'll be right back right after this, all right,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So people stopped eating this meat. They did think to like,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: maybe we should find out what this is. So they
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: took some samples to Transylvania University which was close by,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: as well as some other places, and eventually things kind
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: of got back to normal. But that wasn't the end
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: of it, because people, you know, people want to know
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: what the heck this thing was, So of course people
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: start surmising and hypothesizing what this meat could have actually been,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: what animal this could have been?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this being a gross event, some of the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: theories that they came up with were gross too. One
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of them was that it was rehydrated frog spawn, which
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: is frog ejaculate and eggs mixed together. So I described,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and the idea was that this had well, the spawn
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: had been spread, it dried out, got carried up in
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the breeze into the sky, and then when it rained,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: it rehydrated and fell down his glob. That was mistaken for.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Meat, that's right, but it wasn't raining, as we pointed out,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: it was clear sky, so that doesn't hold much water.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: There was a water sanitation expert named Leopold Brandi's who
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: analyzed the samples and said, I don't think this is
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: animal at all. He said, I think it's a cyanobacteria.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And he said, like a low form of vegetable existence.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And I you know, he called it a gnostic And
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: I've seen this stuff in lakes before, and I've also
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: seen it on like in forests. I've heard it called
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: star jelly. You know, it kind of looks like like
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: a a apple butter apple jelly. So you know, that
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: could have been a thing that came down in the rain.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: But again it wasn't raining, no.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: So just like the frog spawn theory, this one had
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a hole in it and that it would require precipitation
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to come back down. Also, that was kind of the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: prevailing thought at the time that this stuff somehow it
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: up on the breeze and then rained back down because
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: you couldn't see it until it rehydrated on the ground
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't really in the sky anyway, So not
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a good theory. Finally, I think in eighteen seventy six,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the same year chemistry professor named doctor ld. Cast and
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Bind proposed what is now widely considered the correct explanation
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: for what exactly happened and what exactly happened Chuck.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't make it any less gross to sort
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: of find out what it was. In fact, it probably
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: makes it more gross than mystery meat. In eighteen seventy six,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: he wrote in the Louisville Medical News that he thought
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: it was a mass vulture vomiting incident. Not a bad
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: band name in and of itself, now that I think
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: about it, but yeah, vultures are known to vomit. Sometimes
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: it's to lighten their weight while flying, which would have
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: made sense in this case, or as a defense mechanism.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, he was like, you guys were eating vulture
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: vomit is what you were doing in God knows what
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: kind of meat it was to begin with, because they
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: were eating, you know, all manner of dead animals exactly.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they ate what had been decomposing animal flesh
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: initially eaten by vultures and then thrown back up, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: then those guys tasted it. I just want to make
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: sure that that is fully clear, because that is what
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: happened in Kentucky when those locals put that in their
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: mouth and tried to see what it was.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but people didn't stop there as far as poopooing
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: these hypotheses, because this guy named Kurt Goda, who's an
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: art professor, and he was like, hey, man, I've been
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: studying this thing for two decades. I guess I haven't
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: had a lot to do. And there's no way that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: she would have missed this large group of vultures overhead
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: like raining down meat on her, because that was a
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: lot of meat. So it would have been a lot
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: of vultures. And for years and years, every time somebody
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: offered up this vulture vomit thing, it seemed like this
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Kurt I was right behind him saying there's no way
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: she would have missed.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: That, right, And then at some point someone told Kurt
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: that vultures actually can fly up to twenty thousand feet
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: in the air. It's crazy, and that yes, it would
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: have been quite possible for a flock. Actually, I think
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: they're called a volt a venue or a committee of vultures.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: That a committee of vultures flying at twenty thousand feet
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: vomiting down kind of simultaneously onto poor missus Crouch in
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: her yard. She definitely would not be able to see
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that with the naked eye. So it is entirely possible.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It was a mass vulture vomiting event.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know they're never going to solve this thing, obviously.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: I think they did have tissue samples, but not the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: kind of thing that's still around today to like test genetically.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: So the weirdest part of this story maybe is that
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: later on that art professor said, Hey, maybe I can
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: a loize these flavor compounds and get it made into
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: a jelly bean. So he did that. He took it
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: to a jelly bean maker and they made Kentucky meat
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: shower jelly beans, and he gave him out as samples
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: at a state fair at the Court Days Festival and said,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: just tell me what it tastes like, and you can
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: have one of these Kentucky meat shower jelly beans. And
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: people said, well, maybe bacon before it's cooked, maybe lamb
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: that's going rotten, or strawberry pork chops, which sounds like
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the best thing out of all of.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Them for sure, But Gody told Atlas Obscure that he
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: just frankly finds them vile. Yeah, Kurt Gody, sounds like
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: a stuff you should know, listener, if you ask me. So,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: if you are listening, Professor Gody bright In and let
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: us know how we did on this. Say it, Chuck?
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Does that mean sure? Stuff is out? Stuff You Should
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.