That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup, raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next, and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken, sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.