One very unlucky German teenager was struck by a meteorite this week, but survived to tell the tale.
Details are sketchy, but according to Telegraph.co.uk, as 14-year-old Gerrit Blank walked home from school, the red-hot object fell out of the sky, hit his hand, and crashed into the ground, leaving a foot-wide crater.
"At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder," he told Telegraph.co.uk. "The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards."
Meteorite strikes on humans and human structures are rare but not unknown. The last time there was a confirmed strike on a human was in 1954, when Ann Hodges, an Alabama housewife got smacked in the hip by a ricocheting space rock. Sadly, Hodges, a renter, got sued by her landlady for possession of the meteor. The famous rock was considered very valuable, and was anticipated to fetch $20,000 at auction, which would equate to several hundred thousand dollars today.
Less than a year after Hodges, another Alabama housewife, Mrs. W. Douglas Beardon, just missed getting crushed in her yard by a meteorite "humming like a vacuum cleaner."
Close calls have been noted throughout history. For example, villagers watched in amazement as a large meteorite hit near the town of Ensisheim in 1492, and a meteorite smashed into Michelle Knapp's parked car in Peekskill, New York, just a few weeks short of 500 years later (illustrated above).
A broad 1991 study of meteorite strikes on structures and near humans found that they are relatively common. The authors tabulated 69 strikes on human infrastructure since 1790, including 57 in the 20th century. They also counted 25 near misses of human beings.
See Also:
- First-Ever Asteroid Tracked From Space to Earth
- Phoenix Principal Investigator and Wife Carry a Piece of Mars
- Meteorite Makes Villagers Sick!!! Maybe.
- Seeds of Life Came From Space
- Missing 1000-lb meteorite found
- Life Thrives in Earth's Most Mars-Like Environment
Image: This piece of meteorite totaled a Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, N.Y. in 1992./Courtesy NASA
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