[meteorite-list] Some interesting meteorite falls of the last two centuries
JoshuaTreeMuseum
joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com
Wed Nov 23 00:10:27 EST 2011
An interesting recap:
http://www.icq.eps.harvard.edu/meteorites.html
Some interesting meteorite falls of the last two centuries
DATE LOCATION REMARKS
REFERENCES
1807 12 14 Weston, CT, U.S.A. meteor visible half a minute, [21]
loud sounds heard, many stones
found scattered over 6-10
miles, weighing as much as
200 lbs. total (largest
meteorite weighed 35 lbs)
1825 01 16 Oriang, Malwate, man killed, woman injured in [14,
17]
India meteorite fall
1827 02 16 Mhow, India man wounded "severely in the [12,
17]
arm" when hit by meteorite
1836 11 11 Macau, Brazil cattle killed when hit by [12,
17]
shower of meteorites
1847 07 14 Hauptmannsdorf, 37-pound Braunau iron meteorite [12,
17]
Braunau, Bohemia smashed into a room, covering
three children with ceiling
debris but not hurting them
1860 05 01 New Concord, OH, horse struck and killed by [12,
17]
USA meteorite
1868 01 30 Pultusk, Poland meteorite shower of more than
[12]
100,000 fragments
1882 02 03 Mocs, Romania meteorite shower of thousands
[12]
of fragments
1890 05 02 Forest City, IA, USA meteorite shower of some 2000
[12]
fragments; one fragment fell into
a pile of hay (no fire)
1907 09 05 Hsin-p-ai Wei, meteorite caused a house to
[1]
Weng-li, China collapse, killing a family;
evidently no evidence
1908 06 30 Tunguska, Siberia apparent airblast (no recovered
[15]
meteorites) of an object entering
earth's atmosphere; leveled
hundreds of square miles of forest,
killing two men and hundreds of
reindeer
1911 06 28 Nakhla, Egypt dog struck and killed by [12,
17]
meteorite (part of meteorite
shower)
1912 07 19 Holbrook, AZ, USA meteorite shower of more than [12,
13]
14000 fragments; meteorite
fell a few meters from a person;
largest fragment 9 pounds
1915 04 25 Ta-yang, east of meteorite tore off a woman's
[1]
Mai-po, China arm; several meteorites, ranging
from about 2 to about 3.5 kg
1924 07 06 Johnstown, CO, USA meteorites fell within a few feet
[13]
of two men; 50-pound stone went
5 feet into wet soil
1927 04 28 Aba-mura, Inashiki- young girl suffered two head
[16]
gun, Ibaragi-ken, injuries when struck by a
Japan stony meteorite
1932 08 10 Archie, MO, USA meteorite fell less than 1 m [12,
13]
from person
1938 06 16 Pantar, Philippines several buildings hit by meteorites
[12]
1938 06 24 Chicora, PA, USA cow's hide injured, presumably by
[17]
a fragment belonging to the
meteorite shower in that area
on that day
1938 09 29 Benld, IL, USA building and car hit by stony
[12, 13]
meteorites; the car was hit by
a 4-pound fragment after it
crashed through the roof of a
garage, then through roof, seat,
and floorboards of car
1947 02 12 Sikhote-Alin, south- largest meteorite shower on
[2]
eastern Siberia record; estimated 100 tons of
total debris fell, the largest
weighing 1745 kg; some 9000
fragments weighing about 28
tons recovered; largest crater
28 m wide
1950 09 20 Murray, KY, USA five buildings hit by meteorites
[12]
1950 12 10 St. Louis, MO, USA car hit by meteorite
[12]
1954 11 30 Sylacauga, AL, USA woman in home hit by meteorite [3,
12]
after breaking through roof
1965 12 24 Barwell, England two buildings and a car hit by
[12]
by meteorites
1971 04 08 Wethersfield, CT, 12-ounce meteorite entered house [4,
12]
USA through roof, lodged in living-
room ceiling; ordinary chondrite;
less than two miles away, another
house was hit 11.5 yr later
1976 03 08 Jilin City, Jilin, largest stony-meteorite shower [1,
12]
China in recent times; more than
100 fragments, the largest
being 1770 kg in weight and
making an impact crater 6 m deep;
H5 chondrite
1977 01 31 Louisville, KY, USA three buildings and a car hit by
[12]
meteorites
1982 11 08 Wethersfield, CT, meteorite entered house through [4,
12]
USA roof; second house hit in same
town in 11.5 years; L6 chondrite
1984 09 30 Binningup, WA, meteorite fell 4-5 m from two
[12]
Australia sunbathers on soft beach sand
1984 12 10 Claxton, GA, USA mailbox hit by meteorite
[12]
1986 07 29 Kokubunji, Japan several buildings hit by meteorites
[12]
1991 08 31 Noblesville, IN, USA meteorite fell 3.5 m from two
[5]
children outside; ordinary
stony chondrite
1992 08 14 Mbale, Uganda meteorite shower; boy hit on
[6]
head by 3.6-g fragment after
it hit tree first
1992 10 09 Peekskill, NY, USA car hit by meteorite, which
[7]
passed through steel trunk
and impacted ground underneath;
fireball widely visible and
imaged along east coast
1992 12 10 Mihonoseki, Honshu, 6.5-kg L6 ordinary chondrite
[10]
Japan meteorite crashed through house
to ground
1994 06 14 St-Robert, QC, meteorite shower caused sonic
[8]
Canada boom in Montreal; scattered
strewnfield in rural area;
more than 25 kg recovered;
H5 chondrite
1994 06 21 near Getafe, Spain 12-cm-wide, 1.4-kg meteorite
[11]
broke windshield and bent
steering wheel of moving car,
breaking finger of driver;
more than 50 kg of meteorites
found within 200 m of accident
2003 03 26 Chicago, IL, USA meteorite shower; buildings
[9]
hit in Park Forest, IL;
ordinary chondrites
2003 09 27 Mayurbhanj, bright fireball(s) lit up sky just
[18]
Orissa, India after sunset; widely observed
meteorite shower yielding
numerous highly magnetic meteorites
2004 06 12 Ellerslie, suburban 1.3-kg (2.8-lb) 7-cm x 13-cm
[19]
Auckland, N.Z. meteorite broke through roof of
house and bounced off sofa
2007 01 02 Freehold Township, 13-ounce iron meteorite broke
[20]
N.J., U.S.A. through residential roof and
landed in a bathroom
2007 09 15 Carancas, Peru 13.5-m-diameter crater created by
[22]
(near Lake Titicaca mid-day visible fireball
at alt. 3824 m) meteorite, numerous ordinary
chondrites H4-5 recovered;
made international news when
local people complained of
illness -- not yet definitively
explained
2008 10 06 Nubian desert, 47 meteorites weighing 3.95 kg
[23]
northern Sudan were found in Dec. 2008 via a
(Almahata Sitta) systematic search along the
suspected debris path for the
small minor planet 2008 TC3,
discovered 20 hours prior to
impact by R. A. Kowalski with the
1.5-m telescope at Mt. Lemmon in
Arizona, when it was about 370000
miles from the earth; a bright
fireball was seen by airline
pilots and orbiting satellites
when the object entered the
earth's atmosphere; the largest
recovered meteorite weights 1.5 g
(classified as a polymict ureilite,
an achondrite)
----------
REFERENCES
----------
[1] Yau et al. (1994), Meteoritics 29, 864
[2] Gallant (1997), Sky Telesc. 93(2), 50;
http://www.k4zrd.com/Sikhote-Alin.htm;
http://www.alaska.net/~meteor/SAinfo.htm
[3] Swindel and Jones (1954), Meteoritics 1, 125;
http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/8p73.htm
[4] di Cicco (1983), Sky Telesc. 65, 118;
[5] Sky Telesc. 83, 372 (April 1992)
[6] http://www.xs4all.nl/~dmsweb/meteorites/mbale/mbale.html; Jenniskens et
al. (1994), Meteoritics 29, 246; Sky & Telescope, June 1993, p. 96
[7] Brown et al. (1994), Nature 367, 624; di Cicco (1993), Sky Telesc.
85(2), 26
[8] Brown et al. (1996), Meteoritics & Planetary Sci. 31, 502; Hildebrand et
al. (1997), J. Roy. Astron. Soc. Canada 91, 261;
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/gsc/meteor_e.html
[9] http://www.fmnh.org/research_collections/geology/meteor.htm
[10] Sky Telesc. 86(2), 13 (Aug. 1993)
[11] Sky Telesc. 88(6), 12 (Dec. 1994)
[12] Spratt and Stephens (1992), Mercury, Mar./Apr. 1992, p. 50; Spratt
(1991), JRASC 85, 263
[13] Nininger (1952), Out of the Sky: An Introduction to Meteorites, Univ.
of Denver Press
[14] Gritzner (1997), WGN 25, 222
[15] Sekanina (1983), A.J. 88, 1382; Melosh (1993), Nature 361, 14; Lyne and
Tauber (1995) Nature 375, 638; Sekanina (1998), Planet. Space Sci. 46, 191;
Bronshten (2000), Planet. Space Sci. 48, 855; Hou et al. (2000), Planet.
Space Sci. 48, 1447
[16] Yamamoto and Murayama (1951), Pop. Astron. 59, 431, 432
[17] LaPaz (1951), Pop. Astron. 59, 433
[18] http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc092903.html;
http://www.gsi.gov.in/mete_ors.htm
[19] Aug. 2004 issue of Meteorite, article by Brenda Archer; Summer 2005
issue of Inside Smithsonian Research (No. 9, p. 16), article by John Barrat;
also numerous WWW news articles, such as
http://www.geo-earth.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t2490.html (do a
Google search with +"Brenda Archer" +meteorite).
[20] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_on_re_us/fallen_object;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16491697/;
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8407/1066/;
http://www.meteorite.com/news/index.htm
[21] Elements of Astronomy, Descriptive and Physics, by Hervey Wilbur (1839,
New York: Scofield and Voorhies; and Boston: Whipple and Damrell), pp.
106-107.
[22] J. Borovicka and P. Spurny (2008), Astron. Astrophys. 485, L1; G.
Tancredi et al. (2009), Meteoritics & Planetary Sci. 44, 1967. With standard
caution, see also the Wikipedia article on this event.
[23] P. Jenniskens et al. (2009), Nature 458, 485-488 (26 March).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catalogue of meteorites available on the WWW:
http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/earth/metcat/ (which seems to not have been
updated in the last couple of years)
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite_falls
See also "ARN's History of Meteorites" alphabetical list at
http://www.arn-meteorites.com/ (which has more recent falls included)
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Phil Whitmer
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