Consider, for example, that for years military airplanes routinely expelled the effluent from urinals. It went out a tube at the bottom of the fuselage and quickly scattered into a mist. Sometimes aircraft hydraulic fluids were added to keep the tubing from freezing at high altitude. Quite a mixture of stuff rained down on unsuspecting folks below. But don't dispair, dear reader, for that practice ended years ago. It probably stopped about the time that railroads ceased dumping all their waste, and I mean all, along the tracks. They really did, you know.

During the days of 24-hour airborne alert missions by Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-52's it was routine to vent overboard some of the crew compartment dirt and dust. As the cabin was pressurized far above the outside air at high altitudes, opening any small vent or port caused a rush of air and debris to be sucked out of the plane. Addition of a simple vacuum cleaner hose, which by chance matched the opening for the periscopic sextant, gave crewmembers a convenient and easy way to clean up the cabin. All kinds of dirt, dust and other debris was dumped overboard that way.

Then, of course, there was the dropping of chaff during training missions. Bundles of aluminized foil strips, ranging in size from toothpicks to pencils and even long ropes like the tape in music cassettes, were dispensed to confuse ground radars. Tens of thousands of chaff bundles were dropped. In addition to the foil there was the cardboard packaging too. Chaff was detested by ranchers and farmers because cattle tended to eat the stuff, sometimes with deleterious effects. Worse yet was the rope or ribbon chaff which tended to drape across power lines and raise havoc. All in the name of training, of course.

Thousands, nay, tens of thousands of gunnery ammunition rounds have been dropped by airplanes. 20mm, 50 caliber and other sizes of ammunition has rained down from the skies. Spent cartridge casings, belt ammunition links and related debris has been dropped too. Most of that stuff was confined to designated gunnery ranges on land or at sea, though Lake Superior got its share as well.