VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via AP Images
So, what are those airborne things that we’re now shooting down? OK, the first was clearly a Chinese spy balloon, but as to the subsequent ones, as The Washington Post noted in an editorial today, “Authorities say they really don’t know the origin or purpose of the three—but did tell people not to worry that they were sent by aliens.”
I don’t normally give over my On TAPs to others, but when conundrums present themselves that I cannot untangle, I’m happy to defer to genuine authorities. In this case, the authority to whom I defer is the late essayist Robert Benchley, whose 1930s paper “Mysteries From the Sky” is suddenly and urgently germane (though its focus is on objects that fall to Earth without the assistance of the Air Force, which had not yet been created when Benchley wrote). As for Benchley’s bona fides, I think his description of an author from another of his essays, “Contributors to This Issue,” can judiciously be applied to Benchley himself. That contributor, Benchley wrote, “probably knows more about people, as such, than anyone in the country, unless it is people themselves.”
Herewith, some excerpts from “Mysteries From the Sky.”
What, for instance, do we know about the many strange things which fall from the sky? I don’t mean old overshoes and snaffle-bits, which everybody knows about, but those large masses or nergium and philutium, which are always dropping out of nowhere onto Kansas and Oklahoma …
The most famous deposit of this kind occurred near Dormant, Kansas, in 1846. Following a heavy thunderstorm during the night, workers in the fields were more surprised than pleased to find that a whole new State had been added to the Union right on top of their wheat, apparently having dropped from the sky. This made it necessary to elect two more Senators to go to Congress and to have one more State fair each year …
The so-called “rain of frogs” in North Dakota in 1859 was another mix-up. Enoch Kaffer, a farmer, was walking along a road near Oyster Bed one day when he was hit on the head by a falling frog. On looking up to see where it had come from, he was hit over the eye with another frog. Deciding that it was time to get out of there, he started to run, but soon found himself pelted on all sides by a rain of frogs, all in an ugly humor.
On reaching home, Kaffer told his experience to his wife, who divorced him …
Benchley’s paper continues, but I think the above is sufficient to dispel our confusions and allay our concerns.
