[meteorite-list] Sylacauga Meteorite in 1954 Struck Woman

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi all - 

"lime green" - what is sylacuaga made of?

good hunting,
Ed

--- Ron Baalke <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> 
>
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/061130/meteorite.shtml
> 
> [Photo]
> The late Dr. Moody Jacobs in 1994 with a copy of the
> Dec. 13, 1954,
> issue of Life magazine, which featured a story about
> the Sylacauga
> meteorite. In the black-and-white photo on the
> table, Jacobs points to
> the large bruise on Ann Hodges' left hip after it
> was struck by the rock.
> Daily file photo by Daniel Giles
> 
> A star fell on Sylacauga
> '54 meteorite struck home, woman, changed lives
> By M.J. Ellington
> The  Decatur Daily (Alabama)
> November 30, 2006
> 
> Sylacauga residents old enough to remember a famous
> meteorite strike
> there 52 years ago may understand why Decatur-area
> residents were so
> curious about a lime-green object streaking across
> the night sky Tuesday.
> 
> People began calling 911 lines when the object
> appeared at 5:28 Tuesday,
> bright enough for residents of Morgan and Cullman
> counties to wonder if
> the object they saw was a plane crashing or the
> result of an explosion.
> 
> On today's date in 1954, Sylacauga residents and
> others from as far away
> as Tuscaloosa saw a strange object streaking across
> the early afternoon
> sky and heard noises they described as explosions or
> loud booms.
> 
> That afternoon, a Sylacauga-area woman who was not
> feeling well was
> asleep on her living room sofa. She woke up when an
> 8½-pound object
> crashed through her living room ceiling, bounced off
> a console radio,
> struck her left hip and bruised her left hand.
> 
> The incident put 34-year-old Ann Elizabeth Hodges in
> the history books
> as the only documented case of a human struck by a
> meteorite. It also
> added former Decatur physician Moody Jacobs to the
> history books as the
> only doctor who ever treated a person struck by a
> meteorite.
> 
> Ann Hodges never fully recovered from the incident
> that put a
> grapefruit-sized bruise on her left hip and left
> permanent emotional
> scars. She died of kidney failure in 1972 at a
> Sylacauga nursing home.
> The 52-year-old woman's family buried her in Charity
> Baptist Church
> cemetery in Hazel Green.
> 
> Dr. Jacobs was only a year out of medical school
> when he treated Hodges
> that day. Within a few years, he moved his medical
> practice to Decatur
> and lived in the city until his death in 2001.
> 
> On Tuesday night, firefighters and police searched
> Morgan and Cullman
> counties for an airplane crash or other evidence to
> explain the
> mysterious sight in the sky. They found no fire, no
> smoke, no trace of
> the object that caused curious residents to make
> calls to the emergency
> number and The Daily.
> 
> Experts speculate that the object was a meteoroid or
> man-made space
> junk. An object as small as a golf ball could
> produce the reaction that
> caused such curiosity among people in the area,
> experts said.
> 
> Imagine the atmosphere in Sylacauga in 1954, when
> there was no Internet,
> few televisions and longer time lags between news
> reports. In that era,
> people were anxious about atomic bombs, flying
> saucers and aliens from
> outer space. They were curious about how that
> particular star fell on
> Alabama.
> 
> John C. Hall was custodian of the Hodges meteorite
> during his years as
> assistant director of the Alabama Museum of Natural
> History at The
> University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where the
> object is on permanent
> display.
> 
> Though Hall retired from the museum, he continues to
> research the Hodges
> meteorite and a related incident involving a
> fragment of the meteorite
> that broke off and landed less than three miles
> away.
> 
> Hall believes that Ann Hodges, her husband, Eugene
> Hulitt Hodges, and
> the couple's landlady, Birdie Guy, were all victims
> of the culture of
> the times.
> 
> The Hodgeses' rented, white-frame house on Oden's
> Mill Road in the Oak
> Grove community was across the road from the Comet
> Drive-In Theater,
> complete with a neon sign that showed a comet
> streaking toward the heavens.
> 
> Hall told a gathering at the Alabama Department of
> Archives and History
> that after years of research, his talks on the
> meteorite have changed.
> Instead of just telling a dramatic but quirky story
> from Alabama
> history, he tries to set the record straight about
> the events.
> 
> Hall believes that the continued media attention,
> curiosity seekers and
> dashed hopes about the initial financial potential
> of the famous rock
> added to Ann Hodges' problems. She finally gave the
> object, then in use
> as a doorstop, to the museum.
> 
> Eugene Hodges was frustrated that first day by the
> crowds at his home.
> Hall said Hodges was also upset that police officers
> and government
> officials took away the meteorite without his
> family's permission.
> 
> Hodges worked with a lawyer who secured the
> meteorite's return, but he
> saw the potential for fortune fade in legal battles
> over its ownership.
> 
> The Hodgeses divorced in 1964. Eugene Hodges, now
> past 80, still lives
> in Central Alabama.
> 
> Court battle over rock
> 
> Landlady Birdie Guy wanted the hole in the roof of
> her house repaired
> and believed as property owner the meteorite
> belonged to her. She fought
> the Hodgeses in court and won in multiple appeals.
> 
> Hall said Guy came across negatively in news reports
> that wrongly
> depicted her as greedy. The Hodgeses finally paid
> Guy $500 for the
> meteorite, which by then was no longer in demand by
> people willing to
> pay their price.
> 
> Years after the Hodgeses moved away, the rental
> house caught fire and
> the Guy family demolished it to make room for a
> mobile home park.
> Nothing marks the spot that made meteorite history.
> 
> Black farmer a winner
> 
> Hall believes the only person with a positive
> experience in the incident
> was Julius Kempis McKinney, a black farmer. The day
> after the meteorite
> struck the Hodges house - Dec. 1, 1954 - McKinney
> was driving a
> mule-drawn wagon with a load of firewood a few miles
> away. A black rock
> in the road caused his mules to balk. McKinney
> pushed the strange rock
> to the side of the road and continued home. That
> night, after hearing
> reports of the Hodges incident, McKinney went back
> to the site, picked
> up the rock and took it home where his children
> played with it.
> 
> The farmer told his postman, the only person he
> trusted with the
> information. The postman helped McKinney find a
> lawyer to negotiate the
> sale of the object.
> 
> Experts later confirmed that the 3¾-pound object was
> a smaller part of
> the Hodges meteorite that apparently split off as it
> entered the
> atmosphere.
> 
> Bought car, house
> 
> McKinney sold the rock to an attorney from
> Indianapolis who purchased it
> for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
> While the McKinney
> family never revealed the amount received from the
> sale, Hall said
> researchers said it was enough for the family to
> purchase a car and a
> new house.
> 
> Bill Field, who as a 5-year-old saw the meteor from
> his Sylacauga home,
> shares Hall's opinions about the people most
> affected by the incident.
> 
> "I was standing in the back yard with my mother, who
> was at the
> clothesline," Field recalls. "I remember this object
> shooting across the
> sky with a white trail that I pointed out to my
> mother. There was a loud
> boom and black smoke."
> 
> Field grew up to be a filmmaker who researched the
> incident, and
> interviewed Eugene Hodges and other people who
> recalled the meteor.
> Field bought the movie rights and sold his movie
> script to 20th Century
> Fox.
> 
> No movie was ever made, but the incident had a
> permanent impact on
> Sylacauga.
> 
> "It was the biggest thing to literally ever hit the
> town," said Field,
> who now lives in Tuscaloosa.
> 
> You say meteor, I say meteorite
> 
> The difference between a meteor, a meteoroid and a
> meteorite:
> 
> Meteor: The flash of light we see in the night sky
> when a small chunk of
> interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through
> Earth's atmosphere.
> It's the flash of light, not the debris.
> 
> Meteoroid: The debris itself, a piece of
> interplanetary matter smaller
> than a kilometer and frequently only millimeters in
> size. Most
> meteoroids that enter the Earth's atmosphere are so
> small they vaporize
> completely and never reach the planet's surface.
> 
> Meteorite: The part of a meteoroid that lands on
> Earth.
> 
> NASA
> 
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