TANUJ BANSAL.
Ever thought of blood falling from the sky and it’s all blood wherever you look at and that a bad omen has came upon you from the most divine, well it was believed before the 17th century and even was recorded this phenomenon as a supernatural event since Homer’s Iliad which was composed approximately 8th century B.C. and which scared the hell out of the human before 17th Century A.D. , when it was moved from supernatural causes to natural causes and by 19th Century, scientists were examining the real and fact based causes of this phenomenon. Yes, there was a time it was used as a tool of foreshadowing events, maybe some of the literary devices and some historic events but it now has scientific consensus that the blood rain phenomenon is caused by aerial spores of green microalgae Trentepohlia annulata or by red dust suspended in the water which is also known as rain dust. Usually, it covers small areas but duration can vary as it can happen for short time but maybe for days too.
From ancient history to modern days, there several incidents mentioned of blood rain, earliest was in Homer’s Iliad, that it was caused by Zeus twice and once was the time when Zeus wanted to warn about slaughter in a war, then in Hestoid’s works, it is also mentioned works of Plutarch during the reign of Romulus, the founder of Rome. Then after a long time, Nicholas-Claude Fabri De Peiresc (1580-1637) was one of the few who proposed natural causes after hearing of it happening in Aix-en-Provence, he suggested it was caused by butterflies. His theory was rejected though, well he was just supporting and helping the likes of Pierre Gassendi and Rene Antoine Ferchault De Reaumur to lay the foundations for removing the superstition from explanations of phenomenon, how nice of these guys for at last removing the human fear of nothingness of stupidities of humans lived in fears like of blood rain and died a very long time before these guys.
There were about hundreds of cases after 13th century till 19th but this phenomenon received international coverage after the red rain incident of Kerala in 2001. This event occurred in Wayanad District of Malabar in 2001, from 25 July to 23 September and which also reported yellow, green and black rain. Even the stains were so bright that anyone could have believed it as blood like the records from Gregory of Torus that in 582 “in the territory of Paris there rained real blood from clouds, falling upon garments of men that were so stained and spotted that they stripped themselves of their own clothing in horror”, well, horrific in those times but LMFAO in today’s world.
Latest known records are from 2013 rains in Kerala and Sri Lanka.
