1

Cobbler

Image: Enrique Briseno

What’s not to love about a cobbler? It’s the perfect mix between tart and sweet. The popular choices include peach, apple, and blueberry, but other fruits like pears, and rhubarb, also make great options.

This popular dessert can range from tart to sweet depending on how much sugar is added to the fruit. Cobblers vary from more cake-like to crunchy, especially with the addition of oats for texture instead of flour.

2

Cheesecake

Image: Kelsey Todd

All hail the cheesecake! This amazing dessert comes in many varieties and flavors, from rich double chocolate decadence to fluffier and fruitier options . The cheesecake base also pairs wonderfully with other sweet treats, like brownies and pies, for extra richness.

While it may seem like a very contemporary dessert, the first cheesecakes were created as early as the 5th century B.C. on the Greek island of Samos, where a dessert was created from cheese, honey, and nuts.

3

Banana Pudding

Image: Nicole Winchel Brayton

Few fruits are better companions to creamy desserts than bananas. Their texture and sweetness blend perfectly with many other ingredients. The Banana Pudding is a layered mix of creamy banana custard, fresh bananas, wafer cookies, and whipped cream —a fluffy, chilled delight straight from the icebox.

The recipe for banana pudding first appeared in Good Housekeeping in 1888 and has been a beloved classic ever since, with good reason.

4

S’mores

Image: Jessica Ruscello

This quintessential camping dessert is a truly American creation. The simple concept of graham crackers, toasted marshmallows, and chocolate has become home to a variety of innovations, including the addition of peanut butter, caramel, and other ingredients.

The recipe for s’mores first appeared in a cookbook in the 1920s, when it was already gaining popularity among campers in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. And if you’re nowhere near a campfire, you can make this classic treat in your own oven at home.

5

Lemon Squares

Image: Elena Kloppenburg

This yellow cousin of the brownie (more on that later) is perfect for anyone who loves tart and flaky treats. The most successful recipes include a buttery shortbread crust, a layer of deliciously tangy lemon curd, and a light dusting of powdered sugar.

Chilled in the fridge, lemon squares make an ideal summertime dessert to savor when the heat is overwhelming.

6

Frozen custard

Image: Tim Mossholder

Everybody knows custard, right? And, as tasty as it is, frozen custard is—even better for many people. This gourmet ice cream treat, made with eggs, cream, and sugar is specially celebrated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—the so-called "Custard Capital of the World"—where it's sold more than anywhere else around the globe.

Because it contains much less air than other similar treats, frozen custard is thick, dense, and packed with flavor.

7

Key lime pie

Image: Nathan Lemon

Who doesn’t love key lime pie? This sweet and sour dessert originates from the Florida Keys. It consists of Key lime juice, condensed milk, and eggs, mixed into a creamy custard. The custard is poured into a buttery crust made from graham crackers and topped with sweet whipped cream. The acidic flavors of the limes provide a perfect contrast to the sweetness of the sugar and cream.

8

Gooey Butter Cake

Image: Olga Petnyunene

Gooey butter cake is an accurately descriptive name for this treat, a hallmark of the city of St. Louis. It’s a flat, dense cake made from wheat flour, butter, sugar, and eggs . The cake is traditionally garnished with powdered sugar and sometimes a few raspberries.

Sweet, rich, and firm, gooey butter cake was created in the 1930s by a baker who, while attempting to make a standard yellow cake, accidentally added too much sugar, butter, or shortening. Rather than discard the gooey, sticky batter, he decided to sell it—and customers couldn’t get enough.

9

Beignets

Image: Keesha's Kitchen

While this dish originated in France, America has made it its own. Beignets are squares of deep-fried pastry dough sprinkled with powdered sugar and traditionally served hot . These days, beignets are most commonly associated with the French Quarter of New Orleans, where they were declared the official state donut in 1986. These treats are often enjoyed alongside chocolate milk or café au lait.

10

Brownies

Image: NordWood Themes

Last but not least, another American favorite makes its entrance. These small chocolate cakes come in various forms, from thicker, fudge-like brownies to lighter, fluffier versions. Brownies are also perfect for pairing with other popular desserts, like ice cream and caramel sauce, and can include nuts or frosting. There’s even a "blonde" variation!

Brownies hold a special place in American culture, often associated with home-baked goods, school bake sales, and family gatherings. Everyone has a favorite type of brownie. What’s yours?

1

The Kentucky meat shower

On March 3, 1876, residents near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky, witnessed one of the strangest events in American history. Chunks of meat suddenly fell from an apparently clear sky, covering an area estimated at 100 by 50 yards. One of the witnesses, Mrs. Allen Crouch, was making soap outdoors when the bizarre shower began.

Scientists examined samples and argued over whether the meat came from horses, sheep, or other mammals. The leading modern explanation is far less supernatural: a flock of vultures likely regurgitated partially digested meat while flying overhead, a defensive behavior the birds still exhibit today . Tasty, right? The incident remains so famous that Kentucky now celebrates it with an annual Meat Shower Festival.

2

A frog rain

Reports of frogs raining from the sky have appeared across the country for well over a century. Although they sound impossible, meteorologists consider them entirely plausible under the right weather conditions.

The usual explanation involves waterspouts or tornadoes passing over ponds or marshes . These powerful rotating columns of air can lift small frogs into the atmosphere before carrying them several miles away. When the storm weakens, the animals fall back to Earth, sometimes astonishing entire neighborhoods as tiny frogs suddenly cover roads, sidewalks, and backyards.

3

Louisiana’s fish storm

Residents of Marksville, Louisiana, experienced one of this country’s best-known fish rains on October 23, 1947. During a storm, dozens of small fish reportedly began falling from the sky, surprising everyone who witnessed the event.

Scientists quickly pointed toward nearby lakes and bayous as the likely source. A waterspout probably sucked up the fish before releasing them inland once the storm lost strength . Cases like Marksville have become classic examples used by meteorologists when explaining how unusual "animal rain" can occur without breaking the laws of physics.

4

The red rain

Few things are more unsettling than seeing rainwater that looks like blood, right? Throughout American history, scattered reports of reddish rainfall have sparked fears, newspaper headlines, and plenty of speculation.

Modern science offers much less frightening explanations. Fine dust rich in iron oxide can tint rain a rusty red after traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles through the atmosphere . Certain airborne microorganisms may also contribute to unusual coloration. While dramatic, these events have repeatedly turned out to be natural rather than supernatural.

5

A worm shower in Louisiana

In 2007, residents of Jennings, Louisiana, reported seeing worms apparently falling after severe weather. The strange event attracted widespread attention because the ground seemed to become covered almost overnight.

Meteorologists note that intense storms are capable of lifting lightweight organisms from flooded fields or shallow water . At the same time, heavy rain naturally forces many earthworms to the surface, making it difficult to determine exactly how they arrived. Whatever the explanation, the Jennings incident remains one of America's best-known modern worm rains.

6

Sea snails from above

Along parts of the Atlantic Coast, powerful coastal storms have occasionally been followed by reports of periwinkles, a type of small sea snails, appearing well away from the shoreline.

Scientists believe waterspouts or hurricane-force winds can lift lightweight marine creatures from shallow coastal waters before dropping them inland . While such reports are uncommon and often difficult to document completely, they fit the same weather processes believed to produce fish and frog rains.

7

Crab rain in Chesapeake Bay

Communities near Chesapeake Bay have periodically reported finding small crabs scattered across roads and fields after severe storms. Discovering shellfish where there was no flooding certainly makes for an unforgettable morning.

Meteorologists consider these reports believable because the bay regularly experiences waterspouts and strong thunderstorms. Small juvenile crabs are light enough to be carried short distances by powerful updrafts before falling back to the ground once the storm weakens .

8

Tadpoles after the storm

Several Midwestern communities have reported storms that seemed to leave roads covered with tiny tadpoles. Unlike adult frogs, these young amphibians are incredibly light, making them easier for violent weather to transport .

Spring is the most likely time for such events because shallow ponds contain enormous numbers of developing tadpoles. If a storm passes directly over one of these breeding areas, the rotating winds may lift thousands of them into the air before dropping them elsewhere in surprisingly concentrated patches.

9

The star jelly rain

For centuries, people across the country have occasionally discovered mysterious transparent blobs lying on the ground after storms. Known as "star jelly," the gooey substance has inspired countless legends claiming it literally fell from the heavens.

Scientists have proposed several possible explanations, including slime molds, cyanobacteria, amphibian reproductive tissue, or biological material left behind by predators . None explains every reported case, leaving star jelly as one of nature's longest-running mysteries.

10

A haystorm on the Great Plains

Not every strange rain involves animals. Across the Great Plains, tornadoes have repeatedly lifted hay, straw, and other lightweight farm materials into the atmosphere before dropping them miles away .

Farmers occasionally discover freshly fallen hay that clearly came from another property entirely. These events demonstrate just how powerful severe storms can be, transporting ordinary agricultural materials across remarkable distances before gravity finally takes over.

11

Storms that drop insects

Thunderstorms can also seem to rain insects. Swarms of flying ants, termites, aphids, and other tiny creatures have occasionally appeared immediately after powerful storms , leaving the impression that they fell directly from the clouds.

In reality, strong updrafts can sweep huge numbers of lightweight insects into the air and carry them well beyond their original location. When the winds weaken, the insects settle back to the ground, sometimes creating spectacular and slightly unsettling natural displays.

12

It’s raining golf balls

Florida's violent thunderstorms have produced reports of golf balls suddenly pelting neighborhoods near golf courses and driving ranges . Unlike hail, these were actual golf balls launched by nature's incredible force.

Powerful wind gusts, tornadoes, and hurricanes are capable of lifting and scattering thousands of golf balls across nearby communities. While they aren't technically falling from the upper atmosphere, they certainly create the unforgettable impression that the sky itself has started playing a round of golf.

1

A city became an unwilling laboratory

In September 1950, San Franciscans went about their lives without knowing that the U.S. military was conducting a biological-warfare vulnerability test around them . During Operation Sea-Spray, bacteria were released into the city’s environment to study how an airborne biological agent might spread through a major coastal city .

The organisms included Serratia marcescens , selected because researchers at the time considered it suitable as a relatively harmless stand-in for something much more dangerous that could be actually used for biological warfare. Residents weren't informed or asked for consent, an aspect of the operation that would raise obvious ethical objections today.

2

Particles were scattered across America

Sea-Spray wasn't the end of large-scale military dispersion experiments. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Army's Operation LAC (Large Area Coverage)used microscopic fluorescent zinc cadmium sulfide particles to investigate how biological-warfare agents might travel through the atmosphere .

The scale was astonishing. The National Research Council later described LAC as the largest test undertaken by the Army Chemical Corps, with experiments spanning an area from the Rocky Mountains toward the Atlantic and from Canada toward the Gulf of Mexico. Related tests took place in places including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Corpus Christi, and Fort Wayne.

3

What really happened at Hawthorne?

Between 1924 and 1933, researchers conducted a famous series of workplace studies at Western Electric's enormous Hawthorne Works, near Chicago. One early question sounded straightforward: Would changing factory lighting make employees more productive?

The answer proved surprisingly complicated. Researchers expanded their work to examine breaks, schedules, supervision, and social relationships. More than 21,000 employee interviews were eventually conducted. The studies helped inspire the idea known as the "Hawthorne effect": that people may behave differently when they know they're being observed.

4

Would you believe everyone else or your own eyes?

Psychologist Solomon Asch devised a wonderfully simple test of conformity in the 1950s. A participant looked at lines of obviously different lengths and had to identify which one matched a reference line. Under normal circumstances, the task was extremely easy.

There was just one catch: nearly everyone else in the room was secretly working for Asch . On selected trials, these confederates confidently gave the same obviously wrong answer before the real participant responded. Many participants went along with the group at least once, despite what they could plainly see. Even more revealingly, later variations showed that simply having someone else break the group's unanimity could dramatically weaken its influence.

5

Scientists created two rival tribes

In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues brought 22 boys, around 11 years old, to a summer camp at Oklahoma's Robbers Cave State Park. The children didn't know that they were subjects in an elaborate experiment .

Researchers separated them into two groups, which became the Rattlers and Eagles, and allowed each to develop its own identity . Then came competitions deliberately designed to encourage rivalry. Hostility escalated quickly. Researchers eventually introduced problems neither group could easily solve alone, such as difficulties involving the camp's water supply. Working toward these shared, or "superordinate", goals helped reduce the conflict.

6

How far would you go if an authority told you to?

At Yale University in the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram told volunteers they were participating in an experiment about learning. They were instructed to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks whenever another participant answered a question incorrectly .

The shocks weren't real, and the supposed victim was working with the researchers . But the person pressing the switches didn't initially know that. The machine climbed from 15 volts all the way to a menacing 450 volts, and in Milgram's famous baseline experiment, 65% of participants continued to the maximum level when prompted by the experimenter. Some showed considerable distress. Milgram conducted numerous variations with very different results, demonstrating that circumstances mattered enormously.

7

The marshmallow test wasn’t as simple as we thought

Imagine being a preschooler alone in a room with a delicious treat and an agonizing choice: enjoy a small reward now or wait and receive a bigger reward later . Psychologist Walter Mischel and his colleagues used variations of this setup at Stanford beginning in the late 1960s to study delayed gratification and self-control.

Later studies associated children's ability to wait with outcomes years afterward, and the experiment became a pop-psychology phenomenon . But there's an important twist. More recent research using larger and more diverse samples found that the relationship weakened substantially when researchers accounted for family background and childhood circumstances.

8

Facebook experimented with 689,000 news feeds

In January 2012, hundreds of thousands of people unknowingly became participants in an enormous experiment conducted through Facebook. Researchers altered the News Feeds of 689,003 English-speaking users, reducing either positive or negative emotional content and examining what those users subsequently posted .

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, found small changes consistent with "emotional contagion": altering the emotional balance of posts people encountered was associated with corresponding changes in the language they later used.

9

The military tried to build a pigeon-guided missile

Before sophisticated computerized guidance systems, psychologist B. F. Skinner proposed an alternative with feathers. During World War II, his Project Pigeon attempted to train pigeons to help guide weapons toward targets.

The concept wasn't quite as crazy as it sounds. Pigeons could be remarkably good at recognizing visual targets . Skinner trained them to peck at an image displayed on a screen; if the weapon drifted off course, movement of the target image could produce corrective guidance signals through the bird's pecking. The National Defense Research Committee eventually provided $25,000 for the work before dropping the project in 1944. The Navy later revisited the idea as Project ORCON, short for "organic control." Electronic guidance ultimately made the avian alternative unnecessary.

10

The Government really investigated psychic spies

Beginning during the Cold War, U.S. intelligence and defense agencies really did spend years investigating "remote viewing", the supposed ability to describe distant or hidden objects and locations without using ordinary senses .

Various programs eventually became popularly associated with the name Stargate. In 1995, an outside evaluation reviewed roughly two decades of work and concluded that the program hadn't demonstrated sufficiently useful operational intelligence capabilities to justify continuing it. Stargate was terminated.

11

The CIA tried to make a spy cat

During the Cold War, the CIA faced a familiar espionage problem: How could an operative get close enough to secretly overhear a conversation without attracting attention? Someone came up with a decidedly unconventional answer: a cat.

The appropriately nicknamed Acoustic Kitty project investigated whether surgically implanted listening and transmitting equipment could transform an apparently ordinary feline into a mobile surveillance device . Declassified CIA records confirm the project, but officials eventually concluded that environmental and security problems made the technique impractical.

12

Would you stop to help a stranger?

In 1973, Princeton psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson devised an experiment with an almost storybook setup. Seminary students were sent across campus to give a talk. On the way, each encountered a man slumped in an alley who appeared to need help .

Some students were told they had plenty of time; others were told they were already late. And in a brilliant touch, some were heading to give a talk about the biblical Good Samaritan itself. Yet the topic of their speech didn't significantly determine whether they stopped. Time pressure did. About 63% of those who weren’t in a hurry helped, compared with just 10% of those in the high-hurry condition . Some hurried participants passed the distressed stranger while literally on their way to discuss the Good Samaritan.