On March 3, 1876, Rebecca Crouch was outside her farmhouse in Bath County, Kentucky, making soap, when chunks of what looked like raw meat began falling around her from a cloudless sky. The pieces ranged from the size of a hailstone to the size of her hand. The “Kentucky Meat Shower” made The New York Times and scientific journals, and people blamed everything from a sign from God to a hoax.

A century and a half later, the county threw a party. Starting Feb. 28, 2026, Bath County celebrated the 150th anniversary with meat-themed games in the town square, including a meatball toss and a bologna throw, “mystery meat chili,” and a children’s reading of a picture book about the event. Hundreds came to the closing event. To finish, a Cessna flew overhead and dropped 1,876 individually wrapped pieces of beef jerky.

The jerky drop was organized by Kurt Gohde, a Transylvania University professor in Lexington who has studied the shower for more than 20 years. Dozens lined up at the Bath County History Museum to see a jar of meat believed to be the last surviving sample from 1876.

What was it? Gohde says the most accepted answer is a flock of vultures that all threw up at once while flying overhead. When a university gene sequencer tested the sample, the DNA strands were too short for a firm answer, but the closest match was goat. So the species, and the exact cause, are still open.