4:28 PM
Imagine hearing a distant but persistant sound that bugs you. Now imagine that the sound goes on for four years. Welcome to the story of the Kokomo Hum.

Now there's a new sensory mystery. New Yorkers were puzzled by the oddly pleasant smell that wafted through the city last night:

An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome. "It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant."

Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister. There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it.

By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.

No source or explanation has yet been found from the smell. The Metafilter thread discussing the smell has a lot of on-the-ground reports from NYC Mefites from Park Slope to West Harlem, but no solution.

Happily, though, since it was the source of the Kokomo Hum link above, it does offer the answer to that mystery.