BLUE POINT, NY — A piece of one of America's strangest phenomenons is coming to Long Island, thanks to one Bohemia resident.

The Bayport-Blue Point Library is set to exhibit the only remaining specimen of the historical phenomenon, the Great Kentucky Meat Shower, when meat fell from the sky in 1876. The sample, as well as original documents related to the event, are on display from Wednesday through June 30.

Frank Reiser, a retired biology professor at Nassau Community College who owns the specimen, told Patch he felt it was important to share this piece of history with the world.

"It's part of Americana," he said.

On March 3, 1876, in Bath County, Kentucky, residents claimed that large pieces of meat suddenly fell from the sky in short periods between 11 a.m. and noon.

"The meat, which looked like beef, fell all around her," a witness report in The New York Times stated. "The sky was perfectly clear at the time, and she said it fell like large snowflakes."

For the next 150 years, scientists created different theories over what caused the odd mystery.

Reiser, among many other biologists, believe in a "vulture theory," that the meat was vomited by overpassing buzzards.

"When one sees the other throw up, they all start to regurgitate," he said. "It's kind of a warning, like, 'Watch out, something's wrong!' When you're scavengers, it's kind of important."

As for the type of meat, some believed that what fell was lamb or deer, while others said it was a lung from a human infant or a horse.

Reiser told Patch that the incident occurred at a time where scientists were just beginning to understand the usage of microscopes.

"These individuals just examined it using their normal senses of smell, taste, looking at it, tearing it apart," said Reiser. "They didn't use a microscope."

About 10 years ago, Reiser was searching on eBay when he stumbled upon a collection of slides once owned by Jacob Delson Cox, Ohio governor in 1866 and secretary of the interior in President Ulysses S. Grant's Cabinet.

"This was a hobby of mine, collecting antique microscope slides," he said.

The sample, Reiser said, was mislabeled by Cox's brother, Charles Finney Cox, as "Kentucky Meteor Shower. "

Reiser said he started analyzing the slide upon its purchase. However, he couldn't fully commit to the project until his retirement.

When he recently analyzed it with his home microscope, he determined that the sample was a dried lung. It's unclear what kind of animal the lung belonged to, he said, but Reiser was still able to later verify its authenticity by researching the sample's history.

"I have a flowchart of all the people that had been involved in trying to figure out what caused these lumps of meat to fall," he said.

While Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, claims to also have a specimen of the meat on display, Reiser believes that his sample may be the only remaining sample.

"Their specimen, which is not labeled, is in a jar from a chemical company that did not begin making their labels until 1907," he said.

Reiser told Patch he hopes that it will later become a traveling exhibit.

"It's real," he said. "You can stand in front of a case and look at something and realize you're in the presence of the real thing that really happened."

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