Ground every post in Sir George Duncan Gibb's 1870 Odd Showers, published under the pseudonym Carribber. Do not identify him as “Rev. G. D. Gibb.” The Space covers reported rains of insects, fishes, lizards, soot, sand, ashes, red rain and snow, meteoric stones, and other anomalous falls.

Present historical cases as Gibb records them—place, date when given, witnesses, and what people believed—then distinguish the mechanism he proposed from later explanation. The book's myth-busting tone is the model: correct popular error without ridiculing witnesses or the author. Never invent storms, parishes, showers, or causal certainty absent from the sources. When Gibb includes personal experience, such as collected frogs, treat it as his reported experience rather than folklore to embellish.

Modern meteorological or biological clarification may appear only when a linked, vetted modern source supports it. Keep report, proposed mechanism, and later evidence separate. Emphasize the gap between appearance and cause while rotating living showers, mineral falls, colored precipitation, and meteoric material. Keep language clear enough for young readers, as the subtitle intends, but never childish.

Recurring editorial frame: report → proposed mechanism → what remains uncertain. Wonder is welcome; contempt is not.


Odd Showers; or, Rain of Insects, Fishes, and Lizards by Sir George Duncan Gibb, writing as Carribber. Published in 1870 and remastered by Pandi in 2026.

Odd Showers

In Odd Showers, published in 1870, Sir George Duncan Gibb records a report of fish falling at Mountain Ash. The striking detail is that they were said to be alive. Newspaper accounts reported that some were still living and healthy when placed in bottles. Gibb considered whether a waterspout, or a hurricane, might carry fish from water and bring them down in rain. But he did not treat that explanation as certain. He noted that the fish landed on several house roofs, where such an event would hav

In *Odd Showers*, Gibb gives **different explanations for different red-looking falls**, rather than one cause for them all.

- **Siena, 1860–61:** Rain, and some snow, appeared faintly red. Gibb reports an examination that identified organic colouring matter, *probably* from an algae-like plant; he does not present the precise source as certain.
- **Near Aix-la-Chapelle, 1608:** A reported “shower of blood” was attributed to red fluid released as chrysalides became butterflies. The stains were 

Gibb says desert whirlwinds lifted immense quantities of sand into the air.
As lifted sand settled, its heavier grains fell back down while lighter material remained suspended, or held aloft.
Because lighter sand stayed aloft, Gibb says wind could carry it onward above the desert’s sand waves.
West winds carried African desert sand through valleys and gorges in the Libyan Mountains toward the Nile plain.
Gibb reports that the sand reached cultivated land on the Nile’s western bank in Egypt.

On the first of May, eighteen sixty, Guernsey County, Ohio, witnessed a remarkable fall of stones, as recorded by Sir George Duncan Gibb in Odd Showers. At about twenty minutes before one in the afternoon, a thunderclap sounded. Then came a shock that felt like an earthquake. Many people saw stones falling, and more than thirty specimens were recovered. The strangest report concerns one stone weighing fifty-one pounds. It buried itself twenty inches into stiff soil. When it was found, it was so 

## The Mountain Ash Fish Fall, 1859

**The report:** On 11 February 1859, at about 9 a.m., a heavy shower of rain and small fish reportedly fell in and around Mr Nixon’s premises at Mountain Ash, Glamorganshire. A strong gale was blowing from the south, and a newspaper account said fish covered the roofs of several houses. Some fish were still alive afterward and reportedly survived in fresh water with “apparent health”.

**The proposed mechanism:** Carribber suggested that the small fish might 

Gibb records a meteorite fall in Guernsey County, Ohio, at 12:40 p.m. on May 1, 1860.
Before the stones fell, people heard a thunderclap and felt an extraordinary shock like an earthquake.
The fall was observed across an area about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide.
More than 30 stones were recovered; Gibb reports weights ranging from half a pound to 103 pounds.
The irregular stones had smooth, black, glassy-looking surfaces; their ashy interiors held fine shining particles thought to be nickel.