The date was May 21st, 1822. The location, Clutes Germany, and a peculiar bird had been seen flying over the town for days.

The bird itself, this white stork, wasn't actually anything out of the ordinary.

Storks were pretty common to this area of Germany.

But what got the people talking

was what the Stork was carrying,

this kind of odd piece of baggage,

protruding from the stork's neck was a three-foot wooden spear.

It had skewered the bird from the bottom of its neck to inches from its head.

Somehow, incredibly, this stork had managed to keep flying,

un-bathered by this enormous wooden spear.

On this day in May, the Stork landed on the estate of account

and to quell the very serious curiosity of the town,

the good count took aim and finished what the spear had started.

The stork tumbled from the sky and upon closer examination they realized it was

something even stranger going on because this spear looked like nothing

found in Germany at the time.

It was so remarkable that the stork was given a special name,

the phyostorsch, or the aerostork. the Aeros' I'm Doolan Thuris and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we solve a little bit of a natural history true crime.

Where was this stork first pierced by the spear? Because the answer to that question

would unravel a centuries-old scientific mystery.

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