Reader\'s Digest Australia - 06.2019

June• 2019 | 103

called ‘balloonin the spiders

produce filaments to launch them-

selves into the air. They do this to

catch an air current to travel to a new

location, and it’s actually something

they do fairly often. But spider rains

aren’t common because weather con-

ditions have to be absolutely perfect

for a mass ballooning.

GOLF BALLS News reports

from 1969 recount dozens of golf

balls falling from the sky in Punta

Gorda, Florida. No local golf cours-

es were missing any balls, however

most experts theorised that a water-

spout scooped up all of the golf balls

that had been hit into the water by

errant golfers.

SPACE JUNK Now this makes
a bit more sense, since space junk
would be in the sky in the first place.
Sometimes, satellites simply lose
steam in orbit and tumble towards
Earth. If the machinery survives
re-entry into the atmosphere, it splin-
ters into pieces, which means the
falling debris won’t pose a danger to
any earthbound individuals. Luckily,
your odds of getting struck by falling
space debris are extremely small.
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

BLOOD (or is it?) The Spanish

city of Zamora experienced a real-life

blood rain. Or, at least, the red-tinged

liquid falling from the sky looked a

lot like blood and set Zamora resi-

dents guessing about the origins. It

turns out that ‘red rains’ are natu-

ral. The red colouring comes from a

microalgae plant that produces a red

pigment when it’s in a state of stress,

and scientists believe that its spores

get trapped in rain clouds.

MONEY In 2015, hundreds of

thousands of dollars’ worth of Unit-

ed Arab Emirates dirham currency

showered over Kuwait City. In In-

dianapolis, a similar phenomenon

occurred in 2017 when an electrician

noticed around $200 worth of bills

blowing off a roof where he was work-

ing. In both cases, the origin of the

money was never uncovered, leav-

ing residents and law enforcement

scratching their heads.

SPIDERS The veritable horror

show of a rain of spiders is not as un-

common as arachnophobes might

hope. It happened in 2015 in Austral-

ia, and then earlier this year in Bra-

zil. Spider rains result from a process

BL ’, w rre

SOURCES: LIVESCIENCE, LISTVERSE, POPULAR MECHANICS, SMITHSONIAN