[meteorite-list] German Cottage Destroyed By Meteor?

[Darryl Pitt]

The last time I encountered something like the following it had been  
suggested years ago in a Reuters story that the impact of a meteorite  
(originating from a meteor shower) destroyed a home and started a  
fire that killed two young children in Columbia. After a little  
digging, I learned there was no electrical power supplied to the home  
(located in a slum) and purportedly no accelerant.  I suppose because  
my bro is a forensic psychiatrist with an expertise in infanticide  
that I immediately concluded that dear-ole-dad used "the meteor  
started the fire" excuse to kill his kids.  Reuters put me in touch  
with a local paper who put me in touch with the local police. Dad  
later confessed to the crime.

A bolide creating an arc of blazing light cannot land near where it  
was observed; only bolides that seem largely stationary in the sky  
and grow larger with the passage of time could pay a visit to your  
doorstep.
Wonder who wanted to kill grandpa---or maybe he was sneaking a cig  
and feel asleep dreaming of  (fill in blank).




On Oct 20, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Ron Baalke wrote:

>
>
> http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx? 
> type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-10-20T142152Z_01_L20298092_RTRIDST_0 
> _OUKOE-UK-GERMANY-METEOR.XML&WTmodLoc=NewsLanding-C11-Odd-3
>
> German cottage destroyed by meteor
> Reuters
> October 20, 2006
>
> BERLIN (Reuters) - A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and  
> injured
> a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an
> arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said on Friday.
>
> Burkhard Rick, a spokesman for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn,  
> said
> the fire gutted the cottage and badly burnt the man's hands and  
> face in
> the incident on October 10.
>
> "We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at
> that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid  
> splinter
> and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere,"  
> he said.
>
> "The particles usually don't reach the surface because they  
> disintegrate
> in the atmosphere," he added. "But some can make it to the ground. We
> believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more
> than 10 mm."
>
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