Weird stuff happens sometimes. Just when we think we understand the world, it goes and does something crazy that has us all scratching our heads. While these strange phenomena might seem like an act of God or a sign of the apocalypse, there’s a logical explanation for all of them. Thank you science!
Permanent winter
Some people prefer cold weather, others hot, but we’d be nothing without a bit of variety. If you’re a fan of the latter, then you might have been a bit worried if you’d been around in 1816. That was the year that summer ceased to exist.
Countries in the Northern Hemisphere, including China and Germany, experienced cold temperatures during the summer months that were far from ordinary. While it might have seemed like a new ice age was starting, the reality wasn’t quite so doom and gloom. The reason this happened was due to an Indonesian volcano erupting. It caused ash to block out the sun and lowered the temperatures in all the countries that were affected. Thankfully, the following year, things were back to normal.
Eternal darkness
This wasn’t the only incident of something blocking out the sun. Back in the 1780s, the people of New England feared for their lives when the sun disappeared from the sky. It wasn’t the time for a solar eclipse, so naturally, everyone panicked that judgment day was upon them.
Fortunately for them, that was not their day of reckoning. What had happened was a wildfire in Southern Ontario had caused smoke to blow over the sun above New England. It wasn’t until 2007 that this phenomenon was finally explained, when scientists realized that winds had blown the dark smoke hundreds of miles to the east.
It’s raining fish (hallelujah)
Of all the things to rain down from the sky, fish is not the thing we’d ask for first. Money would be good, but unfortunately, the sky never listens to us when we ask for it.
Over the years, many places have recorded incidents of fish raining down from up above. The earliest documented phenomenon was all the way back in 1861 in Singapore. Since then, countries like Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Wales have all been victim to the onslaught of raining fish, with the former recording an incident as recent as late-2017. It’s not just fish either. Spiders, frogs and even jellyfish have all come down from the heavens at some point in time. How is that possible?
Well, according to science, the reasons this happens is due to whirlwinds that appear over shallow water. The fish get swept up in the tornado and carried across the land, potentially traveling for miles before they eventually fall back down to the Earth. This should be a good enough reason to always carry an umbrella with you.
Let it burn
Water puts out a fire, right? Of course, unless you’re at Lake Abraham. The Canadian destination is home to flammable ice bubbles which can be a bit explosive when lit.
The bubbles are actually filled with methane created by dead organic matter. When bacteria consume this, methane is released which is then frozen in the ice. The bubbles are an incredible sight to see, and for the most part, they’re perfectly harmless. However, get a little too close with a flame, and you’ll come away with some scorched eyebrows.
Our natural instinct when something unexpected happens is to assume it’s the result of something fantastical. However, there’s been very few incidents in life that science can’t easily explain. When all of these phenomena occurred, people were quick to assume they were the work of otherworldly influences, but science proved them wrong.
