Sure, the sky hasn’t ever actually rained cats and dogs. But alligators? Definitely.
On July 2, 1843, following a powerful storm, people of Charleston, South Carolina, came face to teeth with an alligator positioned on the corner of Wentworth and Anson, a small one-way street lined nowadays with palm trees and power lines on the east side of Charleston close to the French Quarter. Editor H. L. Pinckney broke the news in the Charleston Mercury. Though it took longer without the Internet, the story did catch the eye of other editors, and Pinckney’s article was republished in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the New York Evening Post the following week.
The papers claimed that the two-foot-long alligator “had a look of wonder and bewilderment about him,” which is no surprise after his wild ride on a storm Pinckney explained as so horrible “the whole firmament growled thunder and shot lightning” which “burst overhead with a power that shook the solidest of structures.”
Reports mentioned that the gator “was doing as well as an alligator could be expected to do” after the experience.
