It’s a drizzly morning in London, people are muttering under their umbrellas, and puddles are splashing on well-shined brogues. But imagine that familiar damp day, only this time something a bit… fishier… falls from the sky. Yes, back in the mid-19th century, a truly bizarre event had the good citizens of London staring up at the heavens and wondering if someone had slipped something into their tea. It wasn’t hail, snow, or even just rain that was descending upon them – it was fish.
The great London fish rain (yes, it’s a thing) reportedly happened in 1859 and had the East End buzzing. Witnesses described a torrent of little fish dropping from the skies around Hackney and Bethnal Green, flapping around in the mud like stranded party guests at a rather damp soiree. Victorian Londoners, usually unfazed by London’s strange street scenes, had never seen anything like it – imagine that stiff upper lip quivering as folks dodged falling fish.
The exact type of fish was debated (let’s say not every Victorian was an expert in marine biology). But popular theory suggests they were small, silver-colored fish that looked like sardines, hardly the seafood of choice for a Victorian fishmonger but certainly enough to cause a spectacle.
Theories abounded. Perhaps a prankster with a great sense of humor and too much time on their hands had climbed a roof with buckets of fish? Or maybe it was some kind of divine message – after all, fish are a pretty big deal in religious iconography. But the most logical explanation (well, as logical as falling fish can get) involves our friend the waterspout.
A waterspout is a tornado over water, a whirlwind of epic suction power that spins its way across lakes, rivers, or even the sea, sucking up anything unlucky enough to be in its path – fish included. Once this cyclone of aquatic chaos makes landfall, it eventually lets go of its marine passengers, dropping fish, frogs, or whatever it happened to collect. It’s as if Poseidon himself decided to dump a bit of the sea onto dry land. For the fish in East London that day, it was one hell of a ride.
As strange as it seems, London’s not alone in the annals of bizarre weather. There have been reports of raining animals all over the globe, each stranger than the last. Kansas once saw frogs rain down in 1873, California had a flurry of fish in 1903, and in 2007, Launceston in Australia reported a similar fishy downpour. In fact, places all over the world – from Serbia to Honduras – have reported rainfalls of small creatures. (Apparently, Mother Nature has a prankster side.)
Honduras even has an annual festival dedicated to their own rainy deluge of fish, called Lluvia de Peces (Rain of Fish). Every spring, residents in the town of Yoro claim that fish fall from the sky after a particularly heavy thunderstorm, celebrating it with a fish feast. Perhaps the East End could start a similar tradition?
One might think the Victorians, who had their fair share of bizarre phenomena, would brush off the rain of fish, but no. Rumors spread faster than today’s tweets. Local newspapers reported the event with great relish, and theories grew wilder by the day. Londoners love a good story, and many claimed it was the “hand of God” or perhaps a “strange magic” at play. Victorian spiritualists were keen on the idea of supernatural events, and this certainly seemed like a message from another realm – perhaps even the depths of the Thames itself.
Some cheeky souls claimed it was a plot by the Thames fishermen to drum up excitement for their fish stalls, a guerilla marketing campaign for the ages. As outlandish as it sounds, if Instagram had been around back then, it would’ve been flooded with Victorian selfies and reels of fish-rain reactions.
Raining fish in 1859 is quirky history, but we might be disappointed to find out this isn’t happening much in modern times. Most fish downpours occur near large bodies of water in rural areas where waterspouts are more likely to go unnoticed, making the fish showers a rare event in big cities like London. Still, with the world’s ever-shifting climate, who knows what the skies have in store for us? You might want to keep an umbrella handy – just in case.
In any case, the next time someone says “it’s raining cats and dogs,” feel free to correct them with “well, it once rained fish in London!”
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