back to Who is Dumping All that Stuff on Our Heads?
A Rain of Manna. The sudden appearance upon the ground of a considerable supply of an edible substance astonished certain people of Asiatic Turkey one day last August. It came during a heavy fall of rain between Mardin and Diarbekir and covered a circular area some six or eight miles in circumference. Some of it was gathered up and made into bread, which was of good taste and very digestible. Specimens of the substance have since been submitted to botanists, who find that it is in form of small grains, yellow outside and white and mealy inside, and that it is a lichen known to occur in some of the arid regions of Western Asia. It is supposed that the grains were drawn up in a water spout and transported by the wind at it considerable height in the atmosphere. A French traveler has reported that a similar fall of this lichen did occurred in many parts of Persia in 1828, when it covered the ground to the depth of nearly an inch, and was eaten by animals and collected by the inhabitants. Many other falls are said to have been mentioned. (Trenton, (N. J.) American). Source: The People's Journal (Pickens, South Carolina), March 12, 1891 page 4 [[The amount of substance must have been large since people made bread out of it. They did not recognize it as lichens. If it was indeed composed of lichen, then it must have been processed first into the substance that came down. Also lichens are firmly attached to rocks and trees and do not cone off en masse. By the way, a water spout is over water, not over land.] |
Dried flakes, fibrous masses and other substances In all cases, people had no idea what it was, and could only use comparisons in an effort to describe it. It does seem to be organic in nature, but dried and pressed into flat sheets or flakes. Well, somebody must have dried and pressed it before they released it into the atmosphere.
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