Candy Land: It's Raining Chocolate in Switzerland

For the children of Olten, Switzerland, last Friday will be a day they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Owing to a ventilation duct malfunction at the local Lindt & Sprüngli confectionary factory, the small town was blanketed by a storm of chocolate.

The delicious mishap occurred when a defect in the cooling system allowed cocoa nibs, fragments of crushed cocoa beans, to escape. With high winds in the area, the cocoa powder was carried through the air and eventually settled on the ground. Lindt & Sprüngli repaired the issue and has offered to compensate anyone for damage done by the powder, but there have been no complaints.

Peculiar precipitation is not a new phenomenon. In 2012, Virginia saw raw meat descend from the sky, the likely result of seagulls dropping their meal. In 2010, fish trapped in waterspouts poured down in Australia. The spouts were also the source of golf balls covering the town of Punta Gorda, Florida, in 1969. Most notably, a cascade of whale blubber pelted observers who had gathered to watch officials remove a dead whale carcass on a beach in Florence, Oregon in 1970. Their solution—dynamite—caused whale parts to fall from the sky. One large piece crushed a car.

[h/t Independent]