01 April 2008

Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls



Laura Knight-Jadczyk

SOTT.net

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:29 EDT



Astronomy books and papers far too numerous to cite offer the assurance that "no one has ever been killed by a meteorite." (John S. Lewis, University of Arizona)












comet
©Julian Baum

Over the past few years, while sott.net has been tracking the
increasing flux of fireballs and meteorites entering the earth's
atmosphere, we have been, by turns, amused and horrified at the
ignorant reactions and declarations that issue from academia and the
media regarding these incursions. A few years ago, we read that "this
is a 'once in a hundred years' event!" Not long after it was a "once in
a lifetime" event. Still later, after a lot more incidents it became a
"once in a decade" event. More recently, it has been admitted in some
quarters that meteorites hit the ground (as opposed to safely burning
up in the atmosphere) several times a year! And of course, we have
discovered the fact that the governments of our planet are well aware
that there are atmospheric explosions from such bodies numerous times a
year. We have also learned in this series that the frequent reports of
unusual booms and shaking of the ground is often due to such overhead
explosions. Yet the media steadfastly refuses to honestly address this
issue, though we have noted a plethora of recent articles presenting
opposing academic arguments designed to put the populace back to sleep,
to reassure them that there is nothing to worry about, that such things
only happen every 100,000 years or so, and certainly, the Space Watch
Program is going to find all the possible impactors and take care of
things.


Recent articles we have covered on SOTT.net include:


Top Scientists Want Research Free From Politics



Leading U.S. scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the
next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush
Administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important
environmental and health research. [...]


Among the more than 15,000 government scientists signing onto the
statement are Harold Varmus, preesident of Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Centre and former director of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH); and Anthony Robbins, professor of medicine at Tufts University
and former director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health.


"Although surely the worst, the Bush Administration is not the
first, nor will it be the last administration to mistreat and misuse
science and scientists," Robbins said. The White House itself has been
directly involved in the suppression and falsification of science,
Robbins stressed.


But interference from the White House is just part of the problem,
said Francesca Grifo, a former government researcher and now a director
at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Industry lobbyists are all over
government agencies, trying to influence research that will impact
their corporations, she said. "These special interest groups are being
given access at the highest level."


"Government scientists have had their findings subjected to
censorship and misrepresentation," said Kurt Gottfried, professor of
physics at Cornell University and a member of the Union of Concerned
Scientists. "The public and Congress have often been deprived of
accurate and candid scientific information."


"The pursuit of science in an open society has had a long and
fruitful tradition in America," Gottfried said. "Unfortunately, this
tradition has been violated in recent years by the government itself."



Another: Government's funding framework breeds scientific conformity



Here is a list of beliefs in the biomedical and climate sciences
that must not be questioned if you're applying for a government grant:


- That global warming is caused by humans;


- That AIDS is caused by a virus;


- That radiation, cigarette smoke and other toxins are dangerous in proportion to their strength, no matter how small the dose;


- That heart disease is caused by saturated fats;


- That cancer is caused by mutations.


This is part of a list offered by a University of Washington
professor of surgery, Donald W. Miller, who is a heart surgeon at the
VA Medical Center in Seattle. Miller believes that all the above ideas
may be false, and ought to be tested. [...]


But much of science runs on government money. Some people find the
stink of bias only in private money, and see government as free of it,
but they are mistaken. Government likes certain beliefs. To get its
money, you have to get the approval of the scientists it selects, and
you are less likely to get it if they think your idea wrong.


What that means, Miller says, is that "If you say low doses of
radiation aren't bad for you, or that global warming is due to
variations in the sun, you can't get funded."


He says this happened to University of California scientist Peter
Dues-berg, who challenged the viral theory of AIDS, and to Harvard's
Willie Soon, who challenged the pollution theory of global warming, and
to others. In a paper published in 2007 in the Journal of Information Ethics, Miller argued that conformity is built into the system of government grants. [...]


In 2005, in the scientific journal Cellular and Molecular Biology,
Pollack made an argument similar to Miller's. American science, he
wrote, has become "a culture of believers" whose rule is, "just keep it
safe and get your funding."


For science, the result has not been good. [...]


Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, argued famously that
science progresses in revolutionary bursts, in which the "dominant
paradigm" is overturned. But what if the supporters of the dominant
paradigm are the people vetting your application?



We most certainly can see that the issue of meteorite, cometary and
asteroid impacts on our planet, and their true potential danger to each
and every one of us, must be added to this list of unfunded research.


This is a very bad and dangerous state of affairs. As Victor Clube wrote in his letter to SOTT.net:




First, I should say your references to the (cosmically complacent)
paleoclimate community and to my otherwise unread narrative report to
the USAF european office strike a very considerable chord with me.
After all neither Ms Victoria Cox nor your good self can be aware how
very much Bill and I had reason to appreciate the timely injection of
USAF funds at a time when the line of research we championed appeared to be successfully closed down by the UK scientific establishment. Thus we
were both in turn obliged to relinquish our career posts at the Royal
Observatory, Edinburgh on account of this line of research
- which gave rise to our reincarnation at a more tolerant haven namely my alma mater (Oxford).


Also, whilst I broadly accept your commentary regarding the role of "national elites" in the face of near-Earth threats, I
am quite certain the elites in practice currently know VERY "much LESS
than they let on" and that the situation for humanity is dire.

Any comfort you may draw from the opposite opinion seems to me to be
entirely misplaced. Thus although the globally modest efforts to assess
the NEO threat with telescopes by a few semi-enlightened national
administrations (eg USA) or by a few private enterprises (eg Gates) are
certainly to be commended, I look upon this aspect of the NEO threat as
basically intermittent and therefore more or less symbolic so far as generally more urgent and still largely undetected low mass NEO flux (which is demonstrably climatological in its effect)
is concerned. This particular threat (evidently responsible for our
planet's evolving glacial/interglacial condition during the past 3
million years) is of course _fundamentally_ ignored by the current Body Scientific and hence by most of humanity as well.



And so, it seems, we here at SOTT.net, and some brave souls with the
good of humanity at heart, are on their own, opposed by the governments
that are supposed to be in place to look after the interests of their
people.


Of course, the question arises: what led to this general and overall
blindness on the part of the people we look to for interpretation and
explanation of our reality? How can the people who write textbooks, teach in schools, even at the highest level, be so ignorant?
The consequences of this ignorance are, after all, detrimental to
everyone for many reasons, not the least of which is simple survival in
a rather hostile environment.


The events that have been covered so far in this series have led us
to understand that there have been many times when it is highly
probable that the earth - or parts thereof - was bombarded with
meteorites or exploding aerial cometary fragments. These events
occurred, and were probably related to, periods of great stress on the
environment and humanity as a whole. Climate changes brought floods,
droughts, extreme temperatures, crop failures and famine. These
pressures may have caused lowered disease resistance for given
populations, and it is also conjectured that extra-terrestrial
bombardments may have carried disease pathogens. Impacts or crustal
disturbances could have placed stresses on the geological structures so
that outgassings from fissures, the ocean, or lakes may have poisoned
large numbers of people, not to mention the record of tsunamis that is
now called into question. Do we know, for example, that the Christmas
tsunami-causing earthquake near Malaysia was not impact induced? No, we
don't. And we can't trust either our governments or the news media - or
even most of academia who owe their livelihoods to the government - to
tell us the truth.


Why do they lie to us?


Well, the main reason is rather simple: it's all about control. All
of these things, taken together, place intolerable stresses on the
human social organism and, as is typical for human beings, this brings
on a crisis of faith, demands for answers, demands for protection that
governments simply find it too expensive to provide.


When the world shows itself to be a hostile environment, when the
environment suggests that there is no god and humanity is cast adrift
in an uncaring cosmos, most people cannot tolerate this; they
desperately need to restore their belief in something "out there" that
is going to save them, and if there is no one to save the, that means
that someone has to be blamed for the disasters: a scapegoat. The
corrupt governments do not want to be blamed, so they seek to blame
someone else and convince the masses that this object of derision is
the chief cause of all terrors. And the masses invariably buy into
these maneuvers because, of course, if you can find someone or
something to blame for calamity, you can continue in your illusion that
"God is in his heaven and - but for the evil acts of the chosen
scapegoat - all would be right with the world." Otherwise, the tension
and anxiety of having no control (even vicarious, via prayer or ritual)
over the hostile environment, would be unbearable. I'm sure that you
notice that this also relieves the individual of any responsibility as
well, so this approach works in all kinds of situations.


We are going to examine this problem in some depth further on, but
for now, I would like the reader to become acquainted with the facts.
What I have prepared for today is The List, by no
means exhaustive, of all the incidents I have been able to uncover of
meteorite, asteroid, or cometary impacts that have caused death and
destruction, property damage, or were near misses. Major parts of The List
are extracted from the work of John S. Lewis, Professor of Planetary
Sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Codirector of the
NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center, and
Commissioner of the Arizona State Space Commission, in specific, his
books entitled Rain of Iron and Ice and Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth. In this latter volume, he writes:



The most intensively studied impact phenomenon, impact cratering, is
of limited importance, due to the rarity and large mean time between
events for crater-forming impacts. Almost all events causing
property damage and lethality are due to bodies less than 100 meters in
diameter, almost all of which, except for the very largest and
strongest, are fated to explode in the atmosphere.
... [W]e are forced to conclude that the complex behavior of smaller bodies is closely relevant to the threat actually experienced by contemporary civilization.



Based on the data he collected, Lewis noted that:



[O]n the century time scale, firestorm ignition and direct blast damage by rare, strong, deeply penetrating bodies are the most common threats to human life,
with average fatality rates of about 250 people per year. ... On a
1000-year scale, the most severe single event, which is usually a 10 to
100 megaton Tunguska-type airburst, accounts for most of the total
fatalities. On longer time scales, regional impact-triggered tsunamis become the most dangerous events. ...The exact impactor threshold size for global effects remains poorly determined. [...]


Perhaps most interesting is the implication that the large majority of lethal events (not of the number of fatalities) are caused
by bodies that are so small, so faint, and so numerous that the cost of
the effort required to find, track, predict, and intercept them exceeds
the cost of the damage incurred
by ignoring them. [Lewis, 1999]



Unfortunately, Prof. Lewis did not have to hand the information presented by Mike Baillie in his book New Light on the Black Death, nor did he consider the global events of 12000 years ago revealed by the work of maverick scientists, Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith.
If he had added the estimated numbers of fatalities from those events
into his calculations, it might not have decided that the small, faint,
and numerous bodies were so easily ignored. I think that if ALL the
data were plugged in, the average deaths per year would be a lot higher
than 250. Regarding impacts from history, Lewis writes in Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth:



Many ancient sources from many cultures treat comets as literal,
physical harbingers of doom. Such phenomena as the burning of cities
and the overthrow of buildings and walls by aerial events are mentioned
many times in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chinese records, but there is
no evidence of physical understanding of the nature of the bombarding
objects or their effects until quite recently. [...]


There is indeed a language problem in understanding the ancient
reports, but it is largely a matter of the lack of an appropriate
technical vocabulary in the older writings. [...] In certain
locations and periods, especially in medieval Europe, all unusual
heavenly events were interpreted as signs sent by God. Therefore, the
surviving accounts are strongly biased toward explaining the moral
purpose of these events, not their physical nature.
Such
fundamental information as exact date and time, exact location, place
of appearance of the phenomenon in the sky, its duration and physical
extent, luminosity, precise nature of the damage done, and the like
were generally regarded as unimportant, and therefore rarely recorded
for posterity. [...] Even in 20th century newspapers, bolide explosions
may be described (and indexed) as "mysterious explosions," aerial
blasts, aerolites, aeroliths, bolides, earthquakes, fireballs,
meteorites, meteors, shocks, thunder, and so on. [...]


Reports of meteorite falls, often with consequent damage, extend back to the fall of a "thunderstone" in Crete in 1478 BC,
described by Malchus in the Chronicle of Paros. The earliest Biblical
source is the account of a lethal fall of stones in ... Joshua 10:11.
[...]


Other ancient reports in the West are found in the writings of
Pausanius, Plutarch, Livy, Pindar, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, and many
others. The report of a great fall of black dust at Constantinople in 472 BC, perhaps the result of a high-altitude airburst, is documented by Procopius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Theophanes, and others.


Colonel S. P. Worden has called to my attention the following passage in The History of the Franks, written by Bishop Gregory of Tours:



"580 AD in Louraine, one morning before the dawning
of the day, a great light was seen crossing the heavens, falling toward
the east. A sound like that of a tree crashing down was heard over all
the countryside, but it could surely not have been any tree, since it
was heard more than fifty miles away... the city of Bordeaux was badly
shaken by an earthquake ... a supernatural fire burned down villages
about Bordeaux. It took hold so rapidly that houses and even
threshing-floors with all their grain were burned to ashes. Since there
was absolutely no other visible cause of the fire, it
must have happened by divine will. The city of Orleans also burned with
so great a fire that even the rich lost almost everything."



Astronomers who have sought documentary evidence of ancient
astronomical phenomena (eclipses, comets, fireballs, etc.) have found
that East Asian records are far superior to European records for many
centuries. Kevin Yau has searched Chinese records and found many
reports of deaths and injuries (Yau et al., 1994). The Chinese records
of lethal impact events include the death of 10 victims from a
meteorite fall in 616 AD, an "iron rain" in the O-chia district in the 14th century that killed people and animals, several soldiers injured by the fall of a "large star" in Ho-t'ao in 1369, and many others. The most startling is a report of an event in early 1490
in Ch'ing-yang, Shansi, in which many people were killed when stones
"fell like rain." Of the three known surviving reports of this event,
one says that "over 10,000 people" were killed, and one says that
"several tens of thousands" were killed.


On 14 September 1511, a meteorite fall in Cremona, Lombardy, Italy, reportedly killed a monk, several birds, and a sheep. In the 17th century
we find reports of a monk in Milano, Italy, who was struck by a
meteorite that severed his femoral artery, causing him to bleed to
death, and of two sailors killed on shipboard by a meteorite fall in
the Indian Ocean.


In addition to these shipboard fatalities, there have been several
striking accounts of near disasters involving impacts very close to
ships. Near midnight of 24 February 1885, at a latitude of 37 degrees N and a longitude of 170 degrees 15 minutes E in the North Pacific, the crew of the barque Innerwich,
en route from Japan to Vancouver, saw the sky turn fiery red: "A large
mass of fire appeared over the vessel, completely blinding the
spectators; and, as it fell into the sea some 50 yards to leeward, it
caused a hissing sound, which was heard above the blast, and made the
vessel quiver from stem to stem. Hardly had this disappeared, when a
lowering mass of white foam was seen rapidly approaching the vessel.
The noise from the advancing volume of water is described as deafening.
The barque was struck flat aback; but, before there was time to touch a
brace, the sails had filled again, and the roaring white sea had passed
ahead."


A strikingly similar event occurred only 2 years later on the
opposite side of the world. Captain C.D. Swart of the Dutch barque J.P.A. reported in the American Journal of Meteorology 4 (1887) that, when sailing at 37 degrees 39 minutes N and 57degrees W, at about 5 pm on 19 March 1887,
during a severe storm in which it was "as dark as night above," two
brilliant fireballs appeared as in a sea of fire. One bolide "fell into
the water very close alongside the vessel with a roar, and caused the
sea to make tremendous breakers which swept over the vessel. A
suffocating atmosphere and perspiration ran down every person's face on
board and caused everyone to gasp for fresh air. Immediately after
this, solid lumps of ice fell on deck, and everything on deck and in the rigging became iced, notwithstanding that the thermometer registered 19 degrees C.
"


On 20 August 1907, the steamship Cambrian
arrived in Boston from England with an equally extraordinary tale to
tell. When the ship was several hundred miles south of Cape Race,
Newfoundland, steaming along under a clear sky, a brilliant fireball
appeared near the northeastern horizon and "rushed across the sky like
a rocket. The next moment it passed over the topmast of the liner with
a tremendous roar and plowed up the sea about fifty yards from the
boat. The upheaval of the water was terrific, but the ship was not
damaged." The report of this event was carried in the New York Times.


Next, according to the Times, on 13 September 1930, a fireball plunged into the sea near Eureka, California, barely missing the tug Humboldt, which was towing the Norwegian motorship Childar
out to sea. It requires little imagination to appreciate that such an
event, if it were to strike a ship, should easily cause fatalities, or
even the loss of the vessel with all hands. [Lewis, 1999]



Now, that just gives you a taste of what is to come. (I would like
you to notice the highlighted mention of the fall of chunks of ice.)
So, without further ado, here is:


THE LIST: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls


10,000 - 11,000 B.C. - The earliest disaster we
know of from our historical or mythic records is, of course, the
legendary Deluge of Atlantis. The description of the end of Atlantis
given by Plato in the "Timaeus" and "Critias" dialogues bears striking
resemblance to what many scientists are now agreed would be the
inevitable result of an oceanic impact by a disintegrating comet or
large asteroid. The resultant 'tsunami', or tidal waves, would easily
reach 2000 ft. high as they approached land, wiping out any and all
coastal settlements. The deluge traditions, of which there are
literally hundreds worldwide, appear in this light to be variations on
Plato's account, and could even be actual observation-based tales,
eye-witness accounts of the same, or similar, events. This is very
likely the event discussed by Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith in The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. As I have discussed in my book, The Secret History of the World,
the North and South American continents in the Western Hemisphere fit
all the descriptions of "Atlantis," and it is very likely that the
event that led to the extinction of about 30 species of large mammals
about 12,000 years ago was the source of the legends of Atlantis and
probably the legends of a global deluge: Noah's Flood. Let's look at
some descriptions of what such an event can do.



Back in the 1940s Dr. Frank C. Hibben, Prof. of Archeology at the
University of New Mexico led an expedition to Alaska to look for human
remains. He didn't find human remains; he found miles and miles of icy
muck just packed with mammoths, mastodons, and several kinds of bison,
horses, wolves, bears and lions. Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, the
members of the expedition watched in horror as bulldozers pushed the
half-melted muck into sluice boxes for the extraction of gold. Animal
tusks and bones rolled up in front of the blades "like shavings before
a giant plane". The carcasses were found in all attitudes of death,
most of them "pulled apart by some unexplainable prehistoric
catastrophic disturbance."[Hibben, Frank, The Lost Americans (New York: Thomas & Crowell Co. 1946)]


The killing fields stretched for literally hundreds of miles in
every direction.[ibid.] There were trees and animals, layers of peat
and moss, twisted and tangled and mangled together as though some
Cosmic mixmaster sucked them all in circa 12000 years ago, and then
froze them instantly into a solid mass. [Sanderson, Ivan T., "Riddle of
the Frozen Giants", Saturday Evening Post, No. 39, January 16, 1960.]


Just north of Siberia entire islands are formed of the bones of
Pleistocene animals swept northward from the continent into the
freezing Arctic Ocean. One estimate suggests that some ten million
animals may be buried along the rivers of northern Siberia. Thousands
upon thousands of tusks created a massive ivory trade for the master
carvers of China, all from the frozen mammoths and mastodons of
Siberia. The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the
preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found
in its mouth.


What kind of terrible event overtook these millions of creatures in
a single day? The evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across
the land, tumbling animals and vegetation together, to be finally
quick-frozen for the next 12000 years. But the extinction was not
limited to the Arctic, even if the freezing at colder locations
preserved the evidence of Nature's rage.


Paleontologist George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the
Pleistocene horse in North America to be one of the most mysterious
episodes in zoological history, confessing, "no one knows the answer."
He is also honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of
the extinction of many other species in America at the same time.
[Simpson, George G., Horses, New York: Oxford University
Press) 1961] The horse, giant tortoises living in the Caribbean, the
giant sloth, the saber-toothed tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These
were all tropical animals. These creatures didn't die because of the
"gradual onset" of an ice age, "unless one is willing to postulate
freezing temperatures across the equator, such an explanation clearly
begs the question." [Martin, P. S. & Guilday, J. E., "Bestiary for
Pleistocene Biologists", Pleistocene Extinction, Yale University, 1967]


Massive piles of mastodon and saber-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida. [Valentine, quoted by Berlitz, Charles, The Mystery of Atlantis
(New York, 1969)] Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals
were found in Venezuela quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly
rhinoceros, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground
sloths, antelopes and scores of other entire species were all totally
wiped out at the same time, at the end of the Pleistocene,
approximately 12000 years ago.


This event was global. The mammoths of Siberia
became extinct at the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the
mastodons of Alaska, the bison of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the
American camels. It is obvious that the cause of these extinctions must
be common to both hemispheres, and that it was not gradual. A
"uniformitarian glaciation" would not have caused extinctions because
the various animals would have simply migrated to better pasture. What
is seen is a surprising event of uncontrolled violence. [Leonard, R.
Cedric, Appendix A in "A Geological Study of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge",
Special Paper No. 1 ( Bethany: Cowen Publishing 1979)] In
other words, 12000 years ago, something terrible happened - so terrible
that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a single day.


Harold P. Lippman admits that the magnitude of fossils and tusks
encased in the Siberian permafrost present an "insuperable difficulty"
to the theory of uniformitarianism, since no gradual process can result
in the preservation of tens of thousands of tusks and whole
individuals, "even if they died in winter." [Lippman, Harold E.,
"Frozen Mammoths", Physical Geology, (New York 1969)]
Especially when many of these individuals have undigested grasses and
leaves in their belly. Pleistocene geologist William R. Farrand of the
Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, who is opposed to catastrophism
in any form, states: "Sudden death is indicated by the robust condition
of the animals and their full stomachs ... the animals were robust and
healthy when they died." [Farrand, William R., "Frozen Mammoths and
Modern Geology", Science, Vol.133, No. 3455, March 17, 1961]
Unfortunately, in spite of this admission, this poor guy seems to have
been incapable of facing the reality of worldwide catastrophe
represented by the millions of bones deposited all over this planet
right at the end of the Pleistocene. Hibben sums up the situation in a
single statement: "The Pleistocene period ended in death. This
was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period, which fizzled
to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive."
[Hibben, op. cit.] [Quoted from The Secret History of The World]



Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith write:



"Until recently, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of
Clube and Napier's giant comet hypothesis. However, the crash of comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 has led to a change in attitudes.
The comet, watched by the world's observatories, was seen split into 20
pieces and slammed into different parts of the planet over a period of
several days. A similar impact on Earth, it hardly needs saying, would
have been devastating."



The Carolina Bays date to this time. The Carolina bays are
mysterious land features often filled with bay trees and other wetland
vegetation. Because of their oval shape and consistent orientation,
they are considered by some authorities to be the result of a vast
meteor shower that occurred approximately 12,000 years ago. What is
most astonishing is the number of them. There are over 500,000 of these
shallow basins dotting the coastal plain from Georgia to Delaware. That
is a frightening figure.


Let me repeat: there are over 500,000 of these shallow basins.














Image
©Unknown
Carolina Bays


Unlike virtually any other bodies of water or changes in elevation,
these topographical features follow a reliable and unmistakable
pattern. Carolina Bays are circular, typically stretched, elliptical
depressions in the ground, oriented along their long axis from the
Northwest to the Southeast. [T]hey are further characterized by an
elevated rim of fine sand surrounding the perimeter. [...]


Robert Kobres, an independent researcher in Athens, Georgia, has
studied Carolina Bays for nearly 20 years in conjunction with his
larger interest in impact threats from space. His recent,
self-published, investigations have profound consequences for Carolina
Bay study and demand research by academia as serious, relevant and
previously unexamined new information. The essence of Kobres' theory is
that the search for "debris," and the comparison of Bays with
"traditional" impact craters, falsely and naively assumes that circular
craters with extraterrestrial material in them are the only terrestrial
evidence of past encounters with objects entering earth's atmosphere.


Kobres goes a logical step further by assuming that forces
associated with incoming bodies, principally intense heat, should also
leave visible signatures on the earth. And, finally, that physics does not demand that a "collision" of the bodies need necessarily occur to produce enormous change on earth.
To verify that such encounters are possible outside of the physics lab,
we need look no further than the so-called "Tunguska event."


At the epicenter of the explosion lay not a large crater with a
"rock" in it, as might be expected, but nothing more than a number of
"neat oval bogs." The Tunguska literature generally mentions the bogs
only in passing, since the researchers examining the site failed to
locate any evidence of a meteorite and went on to examine other aspects
of the explosion. (The Secret History of The World)



Now, how many human deaths ought we to assign to this event? As
Firestone, et al discuss, it was global in effect and the evidence of a
sharply reduced population of not only animals, but humans, is there in
the geological record. But what was the total human population? What
kind of numbers can we plug into Lewis' calculations? Frankly, we don't
know. Undoubtedly, multiplied millions of human beings perished at that
time along with the extinction of many animal species. One thing that
seems certain is that if these numbers were included in Lewis'
assessment, it would make a significant change in the "average number
of deaths per year". Though, of course, this was a very big event, and
those don't happen every year, or even every century. They happen on a
scale of thousands of years and there hasn't been one like that for
12000 years.


3195 B.C. - Eco-disaster as shown in
tree rings. What evidence is there then that something unusual happened
around 3100 BC other than the Mayan year zero supposedly relating to
3114 BC?


- Newgrange construction.


- Flood in paleoclimatic data.


- Stonehenge number one


- The unification of Egypt


- Methane peak (fires).


- Cold time according to bristlecone pines.


- The coastal menhirs in Brittany.


Although anyone of these in itself would not be unusual, the timing
of them within a frame of only 100 years, is what makes us suspect that
something unusual was going on. The next 1000 years or so were very
restless time globally.



The postulated bombardments and dust-veils at around 3195 BC,
another narrowest tree-ring date, would have wreaked havoc on both the
local and global climate, and any and all cultures affected would have
taken many decades, maybe even centuries, to recover. The sheer terror
that 'multiple-Tunguska-class fireballs' would have instilled into the
peoples of those times would have understandably motivated them towards
building some form of observatories to help predict future meteor
showers/storms as a matter of perceived urgency.



Stonehenge may very well have been built to help in the watch for
comets. And, yet again, we have no numbers of human fatalities to plug
into the calculations but they must have been enormous.


3123 B.C. - 29 June - Germany - 'The clay tablet that tells how an asteroid destroyed Sodom 5,000 years ago'



A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for more than a century
has been identified as a witness's account of an asteroid that
destroyed the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah 5,000 years ago.


Researchers believe that the tablet's symbols give a detailed
account of how a mile-long asteroid hit the region, causing thousands
of deaths and devastating more than one million sq km (386,000 sq
miles).


The impact, equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding, would have created one of the world's biggest-ever landslides.


The Old Testament story describes how God destroyed the 'wicked
sinners' of Sodom with fire and brimstone but allowed Lot, the city's
one good man, to flee with his family.


The theory is the work of two rocket scientists - Alan Bond and Mark
Hempsell - who have spent the past eight years piecing together the
archaeological puzzle.


At its heart is a clay tablet called the Planisphere, discovered by the Victorian archaeologist Henry Layard in the remains of the library of the Royal Palace at Nineveh.


Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago,
they have pinpointed the sighting described on the tablet - a 700 BC
copy of notes of the night sky as seen by a Sumerian astrologer in one
of the world's earliest-known civilisations - to shortly before dawn on
June 29 in the year 3123BC.


Half the tablet records planet positions and clouds, while the other
half describes the movement of an object looking like a 'stone bowl'
travelling quickly across the sky.


The description matches a type of asteroid known as an Aten type,
which orbits the Sun close to the Earth. Its trajectory would have put
it on a collision course with the Otz Valley. [In Germany; in other
words. In short, the story wasn't about Abraham and Lot in Palestine!]


'It came in at a very low angle - around six degrees - and then
clipped a mountain called Gaskogel around 11 km from Köfels,' said Mr
Hempsell.


'This caused it to explode - and as it travelled down the valley it became a fireball.


'When it hit Köfels it created enormous pressures which pulverised
the rock and caused the landslide. But because it wasn't solid, there was no crater.'


The explosion would have created a mushroom cloud, while a plume of smoke would have been seen for hundreds of miles.


Mr Hempsell said another part of the tablet, which is 18 cm across
and shaped like a bowl, describes a plume of smoke around dawn the
following morning.


'You need to know the context before you can translate it,' said Mr Hempsell, of Bristol University.


Geologists have dated the landslide to around 9,000 years ago, far earlier than the Sumerian record. However, Mr Hempsell, who has published a book on the theory, believes contaminated samples from the asteroid may have confused previous dating attempts.


Academics were also quick to disagree with the findings, which were
published in A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels's Impact Event.


John Taylor, a retired expert in Near Eastern archaeology at the
British Museum, said there was no evidence that the ancient Sumerians
were able to make such accurate astronomical records, while our
knowledge of Sumerian language was incomplete.


'I remain unconvinced by these results,' he added.



2345 B.C. - Eco-disaster focused in the Levant as shown in tree-rings.



The French archaeologist, Marie-Agnes Courty, presented a paper at
the Society for Inter-Disciplinary Studies' July 1997 conference at
Cambridge University, in which she first detailed the findings of
excavations at a site in northern Syria, at Tell Leilan. This was the
first time ever that an archaeological excavation had been initiated
where the main purpose was to examine the stratigraphical record of the
area with a view to searching for evidence of 'scorched earth' due to a
suspected episode of extra-terrestrial 'fireball bombardment'.


She and her team found much evidence of microscopic glass spherules
typical of melted sand and rock which is caused by the intense heat
resulting from an asteroid impact or air-burst. She recommended further
excavations there and at other sites. It would make sense that
attention should be focussed on sites once occupied at dates where the
tree-ring chronologies show evidence of abrupt climate changes - as at
Tell Leilan in northern Syria, where the 'burn event' has now been
dated by Courty as immediately prior to 2345 BC, a 'narrowest
tree-ring' date.



Another with no human fatality numbers included in the calculations.



Scientists have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor
impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse
of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago.


Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a
two-mile- wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the
hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the
Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to
hundreds of nuclear bombs. Today's crater lies on what would have been
shallow sea 4,000 years ago, and any impact would have caused
devastating fires and flooding. The catastrophic effect of these could
explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden
decline around 2300 BC. - The crater's faint outline was found by Dr
Sharad Master, a geologist at the University of Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, on satellite images of the Al 'Amarah region, about 10
miles north-west of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates and home
of the Marsh Arabs. (Robert Matthews Science Correspondent, The Telegraph - London 11-4-1)



1628 B.C. - "The Exodus" - Biblical
scholars have been debating the date of the so-called Exodus for
hundreds of years. The most recent researches have indicated that there
was no exodus as depicted in the Bible, it was all made up by
post-exilic priests - to create a "history" justifying their elite
status and privileges. More than that, based on historical knowledge of
how things were done in those times, they probably were not even
related to any of the people "carried away to Babylon" in the first
place. And so, it seems logical to speculate that the background
information contained in the Exodus story - and other related stories
in the Bible, such as the collapse of Jericho and the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah - were legendary stories of events that occurred
around the time of the eruption of Thera which has been fairly securely
fixed around 1600 B.C. plus or minus 50 years. Mike Baillie reports
that whatever happened at this period of history that includes this
monstrous eruption, it was global in effect as is shown in the
tree-ring chronologies. In other words, more was going on than just a
volcanic eruption. Again, no numbers of fatalities to plug into the
calculations though there are many ancient reports of plague and mass
death and Egyptian records report many strange sky, weather, and plague
phenomena.


1159 B.C. - Collapse of Shang and Mycenean cultures. Collapse of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean region. Wikipedia tells us:



The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who
see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as
violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of
palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, replaced after a hiatus by
the isolated village cultures of the Dark Age period of history of the
Ancient Middle East.



Mike Baillie points out that a series of impacts/overhead
explosions, would more adequately explain the longstanding problem of
the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 12th
century BC. At that time, many - uncountable - major sites were
destroyed and totally burned and it has all been blamed on those
supernatural "Sea Peoples." If that was the case, if it was invasion
and conquest, there ought to at least be some evidence for that, like
dead warriors or signs of warfare... but for the most part, that is not
the case. There were almost no bodies found, and no precious objects
except those that were hidden away as though someone expected to return
for them, or didn't have time to retrieve them. The people who fled
(extra-terrestrial events often have precursor activities and warnings
because a comet can often be observed approaching for some time) were
probably also killed in the act of fleeing and the result was total
abandonment and total destruction of the cities in question.


John Lewis did not include this in his calculations either.


207 B.C. - Scientists Say Comet Smashed Into Southern Germany In 200 BC



A comet or asteroid smashed into modern-day Germany some 2,200 years
ago, unleashing energy equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs,
scientists reported on Friday.


The 1.1-kilometre (0.7-mile) diameter rock whacked into southeastern
Bavaria, leaving an "exceptional field" of meteorites and impact
craters that stretch from the town of Altoetting to an area around Lake
Chiemsee, the scientists said in an article in the latest issue of US
magazine Astronomy.


Colliding with the Earth's atmosphere at more than 43,000 kms per
hour, the space rock probably broke up at an altitude of 70 kms), they
believe.


The biggest chunk smashed into the ground with a force equivalent to 106 million tonnes of TNT, or 8,500 Hiroshima bombs.


"The forest beneath the blast would have ignited suddenly, burning
until the impact's blast wave shut down the conflagration," the
investigators said.


"Dust may have been blown into the stratosphere, where it would have
been transported around the globe easily... The region must have been
devastated for decades."


The biggest crater is now a circular lake called Tuettensee,
measuring 370 metres (1,200 feet) across. Scores of smaller craters and
other meteorite impacts can be spotted in an elliptical field,
inflicted by other debris.


The study was carried out by the Chiemgau Impact Research Team,
whose five members included a mineralogist, a geologist and an
astronomer. [...]


Additional evidence comes from local discoveries of Celtic artefacts, which appear to have been scorched on one side.


That helped to establish an approximate date for the impact of between 480 and 30 BC.


The figure may be fine-tuned to around 200 BC, thanks to tree-ring
evidence from preserved Irish oaks, which show a slowing in growth
around 207 BC.


This may have been caused by a veil of dust kicked up the impact, which filtered out sunlight.


In addition, Roman authors at about the same time wrote about
showers of stones falling from the skies and terrifying the populace.


The object is more likely to have been a comet than an asteroid,
given the length of the ellipse and scattered debris, the report says.



44 B.C. - Pliny states that there were
"Portentous and protracted eclipses of the sun occur, such as the one
after the murder of Caesar the dictator...." Yet there were no solar
eclipses visible from anywhere in the Roman Empire from Feb. of 48 B.C.
through Dec. of 41 B.C., inclusive. There was a spectacular daylight
comet in 44 B.C., perhaps the most famous comet in antiquity. A dust
veil occluded the sky over Italy in the spring of 44, and has often
been attributed to an (unconfirmed) eruption of Mt Etna. There are
sulfate deposits in the Greenland ice cores for this year and there is
tree ring evidence from North America, where dendrochronology points to
a climatic change in the late 40's B.C. What hit and where it hit, has
yet to be determined, and whether or not there was death and
destruction somewhere on the globe, is unknown.


John S. Lewis does not include this event in his calculations.


60 - 70 AD - The destruction of Jerusalem.



The story Josephus tells of the sixties is one of famine, social
unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class
warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and
the scattering of Judeans throughout Palestine. ... There were wars,
rumors of wars for the better part of ten years and Josephus reports portents, including a brilliant daylight in the middle of the night! (Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, 1988, 2006)



We recognize that brilliant daylight at night from the Tunguska event.


Josephus gives several portents of the evil to befall Jerusalem and
the temple. He described a star resembling a sword, a comet, a light
shining in the temple, a cow giving birth to a lamb at the moment it
was to be sacrificed in the Jerusalem Temple, armies fighting in the sky,
and a voice from the Holy of Holies declaring, "We are departing"
(Josephus, Jewish Wars, 6). (Obviously, the voice was apocryphal.)


Some of these portents are mentioned by other contemporary
historians, Tacitus for example. However, Tacitus, in book five of his
Histories, castigated the superstitious Jews for not recognizing and
offering expiations for the portents to avert the disasters. He put the
destruction of Jerusalem down to the stupidity or willful ignorance of
the Jews themselves in not offering the appropriate sacrifices.




Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city
[Jerusalem], and a comet, that continued a whole year... (Josephus,
Jewish Wars 6.3)



In short, it very well may be that the eschatological writings in
the New Testament, the very formation of the Myth of Jesus, was based
on cometary events of the time, including a memory of the "Star in the
East." The destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem may very well have
been an "act of God," as reported by Mark in his Gospel.


312 - Italy - A team of geologists
believes it has found the incoming space rock's impact crater, and
dating suggests its formation coincided with the celestial vision said
to have converted a future Roman emperor to Christianity. The small,
circular Cratere del Sirente in central Italy is clearly an impact
crater, said the geologists because its shape fits and it is also
surrounded by numerous smaller, secondary craters, gouged out by
ejected debris, as expected from impact models.


Radiocarbon dating puts the crater's formation at about the right
time to have been witnessed by Constantine and there are magnetic
anomalies detected around the secondary craters - possibly due to
magnetic fragments from the meteorite. It would have struck the Earth
with the force of a small nuclear bomb, perhaps a kiloton in yield. It
would have looked like a nuclear blast, with a mushroom cloud and
shockwaves.


476 A.D. - I-hsi and Chin-ling, China - "Thundering chariots" "like granite" fell to ground; vegetation was scorched.


526 - Great Antioch earthquake




...those caught in the earth beneath the buildings were incinerated
and sparks of fire appeared out of the air and burned everyone they
struck like lightning. The surface of the earth boiled and foundations
of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the earthquakes
and were burned to ashes by fire... it was a tremendous and incredible
marvel with fire belching out rain, rain falling from tremendous
furnaces, flames dissolving into showers ... as a result Antioch became
desolate ... in this terror up to 250,000 people perished. (John
Malalas quoted by Jeffreys, E., Jeffreys, M. and Scott, R. 1986, "The
Chronicle of John Malalas", Byzantina Australiensia, Australian Assoc. Byzantine Studies 4, Melbourne.)



536 - 545 - reduced sunlight, mists or "dry fogs, crop failures, famines in China and the Mediterranean, and plagues."


The Praetorian Prefect Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator wrote a letter documenting the conditions.



All of us are observing, as it were, a blue coloured sun; we marvel
at bodies which cast no mid-day shadow, and at that strength of
intensest heat reaching extreme and dull tepidity ... So we have had a
winter without storms, spring without mildness, summer without heat ...
The seasons have changed by failing to change; and what used to be
achieved by mingled rains cannot be gained from dryness only.



Procopius of Caesarea, a Byzantine, wrote:



And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took
place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the
moon, during the whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in
eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is
accustomed to shed.



John of Ephesus, cleric and a historian, wrote:



The sun was dark and its darkness lasted for eighteen months; each
day it shone for about four hours; and still this light was only a
feeble shadow ... the fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like
sour grapes.



In the wake of this inexplicable darkness, crops failed and famine
struck. And then, pestilence. But here we mean "pestilence" as Jacme
d'Agramaont, a doctor writing in 1348 described it in reference to the
"Black Death".



... Agramont said nothing concerning the term epidemia, but he extensively developed what he meant by pestilencia.
He gave this latter term a very peculiar etymology, in accordance with
a from of knowledge established by Isidore of Seville (570=636) in his
Etymologiae, which came to be widely accepted throughout Europe during
the Middle Ages. He split the term pestilencia up into three syllables,
each having a particular meaning: pes = tempesta: 'storm, tempest'; te
= 'temps, time', lencia = clardat: 'brightness, light'; hence, he
concluded, the pestilencia was 'the time of tempest caused by light from the stars.' [Jon Arrizabalaga, see Part One]



During the time of Justinian, this "pestilence" ravaged Europe, reducing the population of the Roman empire by a third,
killing four-fifths of the citizens of Constantinople, reaching as far
East as China and as far Northwest as Great Britain. John of Ephesus
documented the progress of this "pestilence" in AD 541-542 in Constantinople, where city officials gave up trying to count the dead after two hundred thirty thousand:



The city stank with corpses as there were neither litters nor
diggers, and corpses were heaped up in the streets ... It might happen
that [a person] went out to market to buy necessities and while he was
standing and talking or counting his change, suddenly the end would
overcome the buyer here and the seller there, the merchandise remaining
in the middle with the payment for it, without there being either buyer
or seller to pick it up.



This was also the time assigned to the legendary King Arthur, the
loss of the Grail, and the manifestation of the Wasteland. Although
scholars place the historical King Arthur in the fifth century, the
date of his death is given as AD 539. According to Mike Baillie, the imagery from the Arthurian legend is in accordance with the appearance of a comet and subsequent famine and plague:
the "Waste Land" of legend. Ireland's St. Patrick stories feature a
wasteland as well. And although St. Patrick is credited with ridding
Ireland of snakes, we might consider that there never were snakes in
Ireland, and that snakes and dragons are images associated with comets.


Until that point in time, the Britons had held control of post-Roman
Britain, keeping the Anglo-Saxons isolated and suppressed. After the
Romans were gone, the Britons maintained the status quo, living in
towns, with elected officials, and carrying on trade with the empire.
After AD 536, the year reported as the "death of Arthur", the Britons,
the ancient Cymric empire that at one time had stretched from Cornwall
in the south to Strathclyde in the north, all but disappeared, and were
replaced by Anglo-Saxons. There is much debate among scholars as to
whether the Anglo-Saxons killed all of the Britons, or assimilated
them. Here we must consider that they were victims of possibly many
overhead cometary explosions which wiped out most of the population of
Europe, plunging it into the Dark Ages which were, apparently, really
DARK, atmospherically speaking.














Image
©Unknown
Flag of Wales


The mystery of the origins of the red dragon symbol, now on the flag
of Wales, has perplexed many historians, writers and romanticists, and
the archæological community generally has refrained from commenting on
this most unusual emblem, claiming it does not concern them. In the
ancient Welsh language it is known as 'Draig Goch' - 'red dragon', and
in "Y Geiriadur Cymraeg Prifysgol Cymru", the "University of Wales
Welsh Dictionary", (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1967, p. 1082)
there are translations for the various uses of the Welsh word 'draig'.
Amongst them are common uses of the word, which is today taken just to
mean a 'dragon', but in times past it has also been used to refer to
'Mellt Distaw' - (sheet lightning), and also 'Mellt Didaranau' -
(lightning unaccompanied by thunder).


But the most interesting common usage of the word in earlier times,
according to this authoritative dictionary, is 'Maen Mellt' the word
used to refer to a 'meteorite'. And this makes sense, as the Welsh word
'maen' translates as 'stone', while the Welsh word 'mellt' translates
as 'lightning' - so literally a 'lightning-stone'. That the ancient
language of the Welsh druids has words still in use today which have in
the past been used to describe both a dragon and also a meteorite, is
something that greatly helps us to follow the destructive 'trail of the
dragon' as it was described in early Welsh 'riddle-poems'. [...]


The exact nature and sequence of events in the mid-6th. century A.D.
that gave rise to the period we refer to as the European 'Dark Age' is
still a matter for speculation amongst historians and archæologists.
Over the past 20 years or so, certain paleo-climatologists have begun
comparing notes with archæologists and astronomers, and interestingly,
in the absence of written records, many have begun to look a little
more closely at mythology in their efforts to corroborate the findings
of their researches. While much of this recent bout of
inter-disciplinary brainstorming has focussed on the 6th.C. AD start of
the European Dark Age, earlier dates are also of great interest to
those embroiled in this veritable 'paradigm shift'.[...]


In recent years certain astronomers have increasingly come
to appreciate that encoded in the folklore and mythologies of many
cultures are the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers. Almost
all tell of times when death and mass destruction came from the skies,
events that are often portrayed as 'celestial battles' between what
they variously depicted as 'the Gods'.
And curiously the
imagery in these 'myths' have many common features, even between the
mythologies of cultures widely spaced in time and location.[The European 'Dark Age' And Welsh Oral Tradition]



Out on the Asian steppes, whatever happened in AD 536 caused
political upheaval. The horse-based economy of the warlike Avars
foundered, and their vassals, the cattle-herding Turks, overthrew them.
Driven from the steppes, the Avars joined forces with the Slavs in
Hungary on the borders of the Roman empire.


Gildas, who was writing at approximately 540 AD, says that the island of Britain was on fire from sea to sea
" ... until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and
was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue."[5] . In "The
Life of St. Teilo" contained in the Llandaf Charters, of St. Teilo, who
had recently been made Bishop of Llandaf Cathedral in Morganwg, South
Wales, it says:




" ... however he could not long remain, on account of the pestilence
which nearly destroyed the whole nation. It was called the Yellow
Pestilence, because it occasioned all persons who were seized by it to
be yellow and without blood, and it appeared to men a column of a
watery cloud, having one end trailing along the ground, and the other
above, proceeding in the air, and passing through the whole country
like a shower going through the bottom of valleys. Whatever living
creatures it touched with its pestiferous blast, either immediately
died, or sickened for death ... and so greatly did the aforesaid
destruction rage throughout the nation, that it caused the country to
be nearly deserted".



St. Teilo is recorded as having left South Wales for Brittany to
escape the Yellow Pestilence, and that it lasted for some 11 years.


In 540, in Yemen, the Great Dam of Marib, dating
from around the seventh century B.C., one of the engineering wonders of
the ancient world and a central part of the south Arabian civilization,
broke and began to collapse. By 550 AD, the dam was a
complete loss and thousands of people migrated to another oasis on the
Arabian peninsula, Medina. The Arab tribes, traumatized by the
environmental disasters around them, began to think of conquest for the
sake of survival. In 610 AD, a new leader unified them: Muhammad.


Although a great many historical changes happened in the seventh
century, such as the Roman war with Persia, the rise of Islam,
rebellion and civil war in the Roman empire, and the advance of the
Slavs driven by the Avars, it can be said that the seeds of these
changes, the destruction of the old that made way for the new, can be
traced to the environmental catastrophe of 536 AD.


John Lewis does not include any estimates of the death and
destruction occurring at that time in his "average number of annual
deaths by comets."


580 - France - Great fireball and blast; Orleans and nearby towns burned.


588 - June 25 - China - "Red-colored object" fell with "noise like thunder" into furnace; exploded; burned several houses


616 - Jan. 14 - China - Ten deaths reported in China from meteorite shower; seige towers destroyed


679 - Coldingham, England - Monastery destroyed by "fire from heaven" as reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.


764 - Nara, Japan - Meteorite strikes house.


810 - Upper Saxony - Charlemagne's horse startled by meteor; throws him to the ground.


1064 - Chang-chou, China - Daytime fireball, meteorite fall; fences burned.


1178 - 18 June on the Julian calendar, 25 June, Gregorian



In this year, on the Sunday before the Feast of St. John the
Baptist, after sunset when the moon had first become visible a
marvelous phenomenon was witnessed by some five or more men who were
sitting there facing the moon. Now there was a bright new moon, and as
usual in that phase its horns were tileted toward the east; and
suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the divisin
a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance,
fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was
below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of
those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the moon
throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state.
This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming
various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then
after these transformations the moon from horn to horn, that is along
its whole lengthe, took on a blackish appearance. The present writer
was given this report by men who saw it with their own eyes, and are
prepared to stake ther honour on an oath that they have made no
addition or falsification in the above narrative. (Gervase of
Canterbury)



1321- 1368 - O-chia district, China - Iron rain kills people, animals, damages house.


1347 - 1348 - Black Death - The Black
Death - not included in John Lewis' calculations - killed about half
the population of Western Europe. The effects of this event were
possibly global though the number of deaths worldwide is unknown.


1348 - 25 Jan. - Earthquake in
Carinthia, 16 cities destroyed, fire fell from heaven; over 40,000
dead. John Lewis does not include this event in his calculations.


1369 - Ho-t'ao, China - "Large star" fell, starts fire, soldiers injured.


1490 - 3 Feb. - Ch'ing-yang, Shansi, China - Stones fell like rain; more than 10,000 killed.


1492 - Ensisheim, Alsace - 280-pound
meteorite landed; in the same year Columbus reported "a marvelous
branch of fire" that fell into the sea as he crossed the Atlantic.


1511 - 14 Sept. - Cremona, Lombardy, Italy - Monk killed with several birds, a sheep.


1516 - May - Nantan, China - "During
summertime in May of Jiajing 11th year, stars fell from the northwest
direction, five to six fold long, waving like snakes and dragons. They
were as bright as lightning and disappeared in seconds". Many of them
were recovered by local farmers in 1958 when China needed steel for the
"Great Leap Forward" advocated by Mao Zedong. They have coarse
octahedral structure and contain 92.35% iron & 6.96% nickel,
belonging to IIICD classification of Wasson et al (1980)'s. Most Nantan
meteorites weight 150 to 1500 kg. Due to the humid condition, smaller
pieces buried in soils of lower valleys have been extensively weathered
and oxidized into limonite.


1620 - Punjab, India - Hot iron fell, burned grass; made into dagger knife, two sabres.


1631 - Fall of Magedeburg, Germany



[A] grand storm-wind picked up, the town was inflamed at all
possible places, so that even little aid (rescue) was of help
(appreciated). ... then I saw the whole town of Magdeburg, except dome,
monastery and New Market, lying in embers and ashes, which raged only
about 3 or 3 1/2 hours, from which I deduced God's strange omnipotence
and punishment. (Geoffrey Mortimer, German Life and Letters 54:2, "Style and Fictionalisation in Eyewitness Personal Accounts of the Thirty Years War")



A "second sun" was seen on and around May 29, 1630, and on May 20,
1631, one year later, Magdeburg fell as described above. The standard
historical description of the Fall of Magdeburg goes pretty much as
follows:




The fall of Magdeburg horrified Europe. The city had been starved
and then was bombarded unmercifully. The artillery shelling grew so
bad, the town caught on fire. Over 20,000 of the citizens perished in
the siege and the cataclysm that ended it. The city itself was burned
to the ground. The cruel and pointless devastation marked a new low, an
act abhorred by a generation well accustomed to horrors.



1639 - China - Large stone fell in market; tens killed; tens of houses destroyed.


1648 - Ship near Malacca - Two sailors reported killed on board ship en route from Japan to Sicily.


1654 - Milano, Italy - Monk reported killed by meteorite.


1661 - 9 August - China - Meteorite smashes through roof; no injuries.


1670 - 7 Nov. - China - Meteorite fall, breaks roof beam of house


1761 - Chamblan, France - House struck and burned by meteorite.


1790 - 24 July - Barbotan and Agen, Gascony, France - Meteorite crushes cottage, kills farmer and some cattle.


1794 - 16 June - Siena, Italy - Child's hat hit; child uninjured


1798 - 19 Dec. - Benares, India - Building struck by meteorite


1801 - 30 Oct. - Suffolk, England -
"Dwelling-house of Mr. Woodrosse, miller, near Horringer-mill, Suffolk,
was set on fire by a meteor, and entirely consumed, together with a
stable adjoining."


1803- 4 July - E. Norton, England -
White Bull public house struck, chimney knocked down, grass burned,
flight of object nearly horizontal.


1803 - 13 Dec - Massing, Czech. - Building struck by meteorite.


1810 - July - Shahabad, India - Great stone fell five villages burned; several killed.


1823 - 10 Nov. - Waseda, Japan - Meteorite strikes house.


1825 - 16 Jan. - Oriang, India - Man reported killed, woman injured by meteorite fall.


1827 - 27 Feb. - Mhow, India - Man struck on arm, tree broken by meteorite.


1835 - 13 Nov. - Belley, Dept. de l'Ain, France - Fireball sets fire to barn.


1836 - 11 Dec. Macaé, Brazil - Several homes damaged, several oxen killed by meteorite.


1841 - Chiloe Archipel, Chile - Fire caused by meteorite fall.


1845 - 6 May - Ch'ang-shou, Szechwan, China - Stone meteorite damages more than 100 tombs.


1847 - 14 July - Braunau, Bohemia - A 37-lb iron smashes through roof of house.


1850 - 17 Oct. - Szu-mao, China - Meteorite falls through roof of house.


1858 - 9 Dec. Ausson, France - Building hit by meteorite.


1860 - 1 May - New Concord, Ohio - Colt struck and killed by meteorite.


1868 - 8 Aug. - Pillistfer, Estonia - Building struck.


1869 - 1 Jan - Hessle, Sweden - Man missed by few meters.


1870 - 23 Jan. - Nedagolla, India -
Man stunned by meteorite. (Don't know if this means the man was
"amazed" or if he was hit and physically knocked senseless.)


1871 - 8 Oct. - Great Chicago Fire. See Comet Biela and Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (Another item that John Lewis has not entered into his calculations.)


1872 - Banbury, England - Fireball fells trees, wall


1874 - 30 June - Chin-kuei Shan, Ming-tung Li, China - Thunderstorm; huge stone fell, crushed cottage, killed child.


1876 - 16 Feb - Judesegeri, India - Water tank struck by meteorite.


1877 - 3 Jan. - Warrenton, Missouri - Man missed by few meters.


1877 - 21 Jan. - De Cewsville, Ontario - Man missed by few meters.


1879 - 14 Jan. - Newtown, Indiana - Leonidas Grover reported killed in bed by meteorite. (possible hoax in Paducah Daily News).


1879 - 31 Jan. - Dun-le-Poelier, France - Farmer reported killed by meteorite.


1879 - 12 Nov. - Huan-hsiang, China - Rain of stones; many houses damaged; sulfur smell.


1881 - 19 Nov. Grosliebenthal, Russia - Man reported injured by meteorite.


1887 - 19 March - Barque J.P.A., N. Atlantic - Fireball "fell into water very close alongside".


1893 - 22 Nov. - Zabrodii, Russia - Building struck by meteorite.


1897 - 11 Mar - New Martinsville, West Virginia - A man was reportedly struck, a horse killed, and walls pierced.


1906 - 4 Nov. - Diep River, S. Africa - Building struck


1907 - 5 Sept - Hsin-p'ai Wei, Weng-Li - Stone fell; whole family crushed to death


1907 - 7 Dec. - Bellefontaine, Ohio - Meteorite starts fire, destroys house.


1908 - 30 June - Tunguska valley, Siberia - Two reportedly killed, many injured by Tunguska blast.


1909 - 29 May - Shepard, Texas - Meteor drops through house.


1910 - 27 April - Mexico - Giant meteor bursts, falls in mountains, starts forest fire.


1911 - 16 June - Kilbourn, Wisconsin - Meteorite struck barn


1911 - 28 June - Nakhla, Egypt - Dog struck and killed by meteorite


1912 - 19 July - Holbrook, Arizona - Building struck; 14,000 stones fell; man missed by a few meters


1914 - 9 Jan. - W. France - Meteor explosions break windows


1914 - 22 Nov - Batavia, New York - Meteorites damage farm


1916 - 18 Jan. - Baxter, Missouri - Building struck


1917 - 3 Dec - Strathmore, Scotland - Building struck


1918 - 30 June - Richardton, N. Dakota - Building struck


1921 - 15 July - Berkshire Hills, Mass. - Meteor starts fire in Berkshires


1921 - 21 Dec. - Beirut, Syria - Building hit


1922 - 2 Feb. - Baldwyn, Mississippi - Man missed by 3 meters


1922 - 24 April - Barnegat, New Jersey
- Rocked buildings, shattered windows, clouds of noxious gas - overhead
explosion of comet fragment.


1922 - 30 May - Nagai, Japan - Person missed by several meters


1924 - 6 July - Johnstown, Colorado - Man missed being hit by 1 meter


1927 - 28 April - Aba, Japan - Girl struck and injured by "dubious" (?) meteorite


1929 - 8 Dec. Zvezvan, Yugoslavia - Meteor hits bridal party, kills 1


1930 - 13 Aug. - Brazil - The "Rio
Curaca event." Brazlilian "Tunguska event"; fire and "depopulation" -
"An ear-piercing "whistling" sound, which might be understood as being
a manifestation of the electrophonic phenomena which have been
discussed in WGN over the past few years; the sun appearing to be
"blood-red" before the explosion. The event occurred at about 8h local
time, so that the bolide probably came from the sunward side of the
earth. If the object were spawning dust and meteoroids-- that is, it
was cometary in nature--then, since low-inclination, eccentric orbits
produce radiants close to the sun, it might be that the solar
coloration (which, in this explanation, would have been witnessed
elsewhere) was due to such dust in the line of sight to the sun. In
short, the earth was within the tail of the small comet. There was a
fall of fine ash prior to the explosion, which covered the surrounding
vegetation with a blanket of white.


1931 - 10 July - Malinta, Ohio -
Blast, crater, smell of sulfur, windows broken in farmhouse; four
telephone poles snapped, wires down; overhead cometary fragment
explosion


1931 - 8 Sept. - Hagerstown, Maryland - Meteor crashes through roof in Hagerstown


1932 - 4 Aug. - Sao Christovao, Brazil - Fall destroys warehouse roof


1932 - 10 Aug - Archie, Missouri - Homestead struck, person missed by less than 1 meter


1933 - 24 Feb. - Stratford, Texas - Bright fireball, 4-lb metallic mass falls, grass burned


1933 - 8 Aug. - Sioux Co., Nebraska - Man missed by a few meters.


1934 - 16 Feb. - Texas - Pilot swerves to avoid crash with fireball


1934 - 18 Feb - Seville, Spain - House struck, burned.


1934 - 28 Sept. - California - Pilot escapes fireball shower (one assumes this means he performed evasive maneuvers)


1935 - 11 Aug. - Briggsdale, Colorado - Man narrowly missed by meteorite


1935 - 11 Dec. - 21h local time -
British Guyana - Lat: 2 deg 10min North, Long: 59 deg 10 min West,
close to Marudi Mountain. A report from Serge A. Korff of the Bartol
Research Foundation, Franklin Institute (Delaware, USA) suggested that
the region of devastation might be greater than that involved in the
Tunguska event itself. Eye-witness accounts were n accord with a large
meteoroid/small asteroid entry, with a body passing overhead
accompanied by a terrific roar (presumably electrophonic effects),
later concussions, and the sky being lit up like daylight. A local
aircraft operator, Art Williams, reported seeing an area of forest more
than twenty miles (32 kilometers) in extent which had been destroyed,
and he later stated that the shattered jungle was elongated rather than
circular, as occurred at Tunguska and would be expected from the air
blast caused by an object entering away from the vertical (the most
likely entry angle for all cosmic projectiles is 45 degrees).


1936 - 14 Mar. - Red Bank, New Jersey - Meteorite through shed roof


1936 - 2 Apr. -Yurtuk, USSR - Building struck


1936 - 19 Oct. - Newfoundland - Fisherman's boat set on fire by meteorite


1938 - 31 Mar. - Kasamatsu, Japan - Meteorite pierces roof of ship


1938 - 16 Jun. - Pantar, Phillipines - Several buildings struck


1938 - 24 Jun. - Chicora, Pennsylvania - A cow struck and injured


1938 - 29 Sep. - Benld, Illinois - Garage and car struck by 4-lb stone


1941 - 10 Jul. -Black Moshannon Park, Pennsylvania - Person missed by 1 m


1942 - 6 Apr. -Pollen, Norway - Person missed by 1 m


1940s - Qatar - A crater, believed to
have been created by the impact of a falling meteor, found near Dukhan.
Sheikh Salman bin Jabor al-Thani, head of the astronomical department
at Qatar Scientific Club, said yesterday the club believed that the
meteor had hit Qatar in the 1940s. The club started a search for
evidence three years ago because of stories of a "falling star" told by
people of that era. The club took the help of Google Earth in the
search. They succeeded in locating five craters, which were just
visible on the surface.


1946 - 16 May -Santa Ana, Nuevo Leon - Meteorite destroys many houses, injures 28


1946 - 30 Nov. -Colford, Gloucestershire, UK - Telephones knocked out, boy knocked off bicycle


1947 - 12 Feb. -Sikhote Alin,
Vladivostok - An iron meteorite that broke up only about 5 miles above
the earth rained iron. It produced over 100 craters with the largest
being around 85 feet in diameter. The strewnfield covered an area of
about 1 mile by a half mile. There were no fires or similar destruction
like that found at Tunguska. Shredded trees and broken branches mostly.
A total of 23 tons of meteorites were recovered and it's been estimated
it's total mass was around 70 tons when it broke up.


1949 - 21 Sep. - Beddgelert, Wales - Building struck


1949 - 20 Nov. -Kochi, Japan - Hot meteoritic stone enters house through window


1950 - 23 May. - Madhipura, India - Building struck


1950 - 20 Sept. -Murray, Kentucky - Several buildings struck


1950 - 10 Dec. - St. Louis, Missouri - Car struck


1953 - 03 Mar. -Pecklesheim, FRG - Person missed by several meters


1954 - 07 Jan. -Dieppe, France - Meteorite-building explosion, smashed windows


1954 - 28 Nov. -Sylacauga, Alabama - Mrs. Annie Hodges struck by 4-kg meteorite that crashed through roof, destroyed radio


1955 - 17 Jan. -Kirkland, Washington - Two irons break through amateur astronomer's observatory dome; one sets a fire.


1955 - one of the few documented case of a person being hit by a meteorite occurred. (Source - need more details)


1956 - 29 Feb. -Centerville, S. Dakota - Building hit


1959 - 13 Oct. -Hamlet, Indiana - Building hit


1961 - 23 Feb. -Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia - Loading dock struck


1961 - 6 Sept. -Bells, Texas - Meteorite strikes rook of house


1962 - 26 Apr. -Kiel, FRG - Building hit


1963 - Massachusetts - meteorite fell (need more details on this one.)


1965 - 24 Dec. - Barwell, England - Two buildings struck and a car struck


1967 - 11 Jul. -Denver, Colorado - Building struck


1968 - 12 Apr. -Schenectady, New York - House hit


1969 - 25 Apr. -Bovedy, N. Ireland - Building hit


1969 - 7 Aug. -Andreevka, USSR - Building hit


1969 - 16 Sept. -Suchy Dul, Czechoslovakia - Building hit


1969 - 28 Sept. -Murchison, Australia - Building hit


1971 - 8 Apr. -Wethersfield, Connecticut - House struck by meteorite


1971 - 2 Aug. -Havero, Finland - Building hit


1973 - 15 Mar. -San Juan Capistrano, California - Building hit


1973 - 27 Oct. -Canon City, Colorado - Building hit


1974 - 18 Aug. -Naragh, Iran - Building hit


1977 - 31 Jan. -Louisville, Kentucky - Three buildings and a car struck


1979 - 7 Jun. -Cilimus, Indonesia - Meteorite fell in garden


1979 - 22 Sept. - The Vela Incident
(sometimes known as the South Atlantic Flash) - The flash was detected
on 22 September 1979, at 00:53 GMT, by a US Vela satellite that was
specifically developed to detect nuclear explosions. The satellite
reported the characteristic double flash (a very fast and very bright
flash, then a longer and less-bright one) of an atmospheric nuclear
explosion of two to three kilotons, in the Indian Ocean between Bouvet
Island and the Prince Edward Islands at 47° S 40° E. Hydrophones
operated by the U.S. Navy detected a signal which was consistent with a
small nuclear explosion on or slightly under the surface of the water
near the Prince Edward Islands. The radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto
Rico, also detected an anomalous traveling ionospheric disturbance at
the same time. "There remains uncertainty about whether the South
Atlantic flash in September 1979 recorded by optical sensors on the
U.S. Vela satellite was a nuclear detonation and, if so, to whom it
belonged."


1981 - 13 Jun. -Salem, Oregon - Building hit


1982 - 8 Nov. -Wethersfield, Connecticut - Pierced roof of house


1984 - 15 Jun. - Nantong, PRC - Man missed by 7 m


1984 - 30 Jun. -Aomori, Japan - Building struck


1984 - 22 Aug. -Tomiya, Japan - Two buildings hit


1984 - 30 Sept. - Binnigup, Australia - Two sunbathers missed by 5 m


1984 - 5 Dec. -Cuneo, Italy - Strong explosion, building flash; windows broken; daytime fireball "bright as Sun"


1984 - 10 Dec. -Claxton, Georgia - Mailbox destroyed by meteorite


1985 - 6 Jan. -La Criolla, Argentina - Farmhouse roof pierced, door smashed; 9.5-kg stone misses woman by 2 m


1985 - 26 June - Hartford, Conn. - a
1,500-pound slab of ice, six feet long and eight inches thick flattened
a picket fence. The ground shook with the impact. A 13-year-old boy and
his friend were standing 10 feet away.


1986 - 29 Jul. -Kokubunji, Japan - Several buildings hit


1988 - 1 Mar. -Trebbin, GDR - Greenhouse struck by meteorite


1988 - 18 May -Torino, Italy - Building struck


1989 - 12 Jun. -Opotiki, New Zealand - Building hit


1989 - 15 Aug. -Sixiangkou, PRC - Building hit


1990 - 7 Apr. -Enschede, Netherlands - House hit by believed fragment of Midas


1990 - 2 Jul. -Masvingo, Zimbabwe - Person missed by 5 m


1991 - Tahara, Japan - Meteorite struck deck of car-transport ship; made crater


1991 - 31 Aug. -Noblesville, Indiana - Meteorite fall missed two boys by 3.5 m


1992 - 14 Aug. -Mbale, Uganda - Forty-eight stones fall; roofs damaged, boy struck on head


1992 - 9 Oct. -Peerskill, New York - Car trunk, floor pierced by meteorite


1994 - 18 Jan. - Cando, Spain - an
explosion that occurred in the village of Cando, Spain, in the morning
of January 18, 1994. There were no casualties in this incident, which
has been described as being like a small Tunguska event. Witnesses
claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.
A possible explosion site was established when a local resident called
the University of Santiago de Compostela to report an unknown gouge in
a hillside close to the village. Up to 200 m³ of terrain was missing
and trees were found displaced 100 m down the hill.


1994 - 16 July - Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy begin impacting Jupiter.


1994 - 20 Oct. -Coleman, Michigan - Meteorite penetrated roof of house (1997)


1995 - Neagari, Japan - Meteorite penetrated car trunk


1996 - 26 Nov. - Honduras - According
to the Associated Press: "A meteorite slammed into a sparsely populated
area of Honduras last month, terrifying residents and leaving a
165-foot-wide crater, scientists confirmed Sunday. Near San Luis, in
the western province of Santa Barbara.


1997 - 11 Apr. -Chambrey, France - Meteorite penetrated roof of car; set fire


1998 - 13 Jun. -Portales, New Mexico - Meteorite penetrated barn roof


1998 - 12 Jul. -Kitchener, Ontario - Meteorite falls 1 m from golfer


2000 - January - Canada - a 150-tonne
meteoroid lit the skies over Whitehorse, and exploded over a lake about
100 kilometres south of the city. The Tagish Lake meteor produced a
treasure of information about a rare kind of meteorite.


2000 - January - Iberian peninsula -
ice chunks weighing up to 6.6 pounds rained on Spain for 10 days
causing extensive damage to cars and an industrial storage facility. At
first, scientists thought the phenomenon was unique to Spain. During
the past three years, however, they've accumulated strong evidence that
megacryometeors are falling all around the globe. More than 50 falls
have been confirmed, and researchers believe that's a small fraction of
the actual number, since others may hit unoccupied areas or melt before
discovery. Most megacrymeteor falls occur in January, February and
March. Megacryometeors show the telltale onionskin layering seen in
hailstones. They also contain dust particles and air pockets found in
hail. But they are formed in cloudless skies, a notion that defies
research on hail formation.


2001 - 25 July to 23 Sept. - Kerala,
India - red rain sporadically fell; staining clothes with an appearance
similar to that of blood. Yellow, green, and black rain was also
reported. The rains were the result of the atmospheric disintegration
of a comet, according to a study conducted at the School of Pure and
Applied Physics of the MG University by Dr Godfrey Louis and his
student Santosh Kumar. The red rain cells were devoid of DNA which
suggests their extra-terrestrial origin. The findings published in the
international journal 'Astrophysics and Space Science' state that the
cometery fragment contained dense collection of red cells.


2002 - 6 June - asteroid/comet
explosion over the Mediterranean. Estimated at five to 10 meters in
diameter, it released a burst of energy comparable to the nuclear bomb
dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.


2002 - 24 Sept. - near Bodaibo
(Bodaybo), near Irkutsk, Siberia - 1:50 am - Eye-witness accounts of
the event reported a large luminous object falling to Earth near
Bodiabo in Siberia. Hunters in the region have also reported the
existence of a crater surrounded by burnt forest suggesting that an
impact event had occurred. The event was detected by near-by geophones
as a moderate-earthquake. The event was also detected by a U.S.
anti-missile defense military satellite. Some attempts were made to
define the magnitude of the explosion. US military analysts calculated
it was between 0.2 - 0.5 kilotons, while Russian physicist Andrey
Olkhovatov estimates it at 4 - 5 kilotons. Information about the event
appeared in the mass media and among scientists after only a week.
Another report says it occurred on the 25th of September at 10:00 p.m.


2004 - June - Auckland, New Zealand -
Meteor crashes through roof of home, damages sofa. The meteorite was a
four billion-year-old 1.3 kg rock. "There was this huge bang and a
cloud of dust and debris went through the front room. I thought a car
had hit the house." In the only account in New Zealand of a meteorite
crashing into a house, the chunk of space rock punched a hole through
the roof of the Archers' home, bounced off their couch, ricocheted off
the ceiling and back on to the couch before ending up on the floor.


2004 - 3 Sept. - a small asteroid
exploded in the stratosphere above Antarctica depositing sufficient
micron-sized dust particles to cause 'local cooling, and much
speculation as to the possible effects on the ozone layer.


2006 - 1 Feb. - Canada - In Calgary on
February 1st, 20 people reported seeing a fireball, an exceptionally
bright meteor, streak across the sky just before 7 a.m., lasting for
several seconds before breaking up into fragments. It was estimated
that remnants of the meteorite landed about 400 km south of Calgary
somewhere in Montana about two minutes after it appeared as a ball of
fire.


2006 - 1 Feb. - Bangladesh - A
'meteor' from outer space fell with a big bang on a field in Singpara
village of sadar upazila yesterday afternoon creating panic and
curiosity among people. No one was reported hurt. On information
Superintendent of Police Khandker Golam Farooq rushed to the spot and
asked his companions and villagers to dig the earth near the house of
one Fazlur Rahman from where smoke was still emitting. To their
amazement they found a lead-like black material three feet below the
earth. Hot and weighing 2.5kg, the triangular material looked like a
mortar shell, witnesses said. The meteor was kept in custody of the
Thakurgaon Police Station.


2006 - 17, 20 Feb. - Scotland - The
hunt is on for the crash sites of two meteors near Stirling Castle.
Scientists have been spurred into action by reports of spectacular
"balls of fire" falling in the area. If discovered, they would be the
first meteorites confirmed to have hit north of the Border for almost
100 years. The incidents, reported by several witnesses, were on the
evenings of Friday, February 17 and the following Monday, February 20.
"Although meteorite falls are rare everywhere, Scotland seems to have
escaped remarkably lightly. There have only been four meteorites
recovered from Scotland, compared with more than 18 from England and
Wales. Statistically, we are overdue another one."


2006 - 12 April - Australia - A Perth
astronomer says a spectacular light show in the sky 12/3 was a meteor.
Sightings were made as far south as Albany and inland through the Wheat
Belt. It lit up the countryside for hundreds of kilometres around the
south-west of Western Australia." Witnesses say the the sky lit up
about 9:00pm AEDT, and the light was followed by a thundering sound
that shook buildings.


2006 - 4 May - TEXAS - Astronomers
said a large meteor shower crossed straight over El Paso just before
9:45 p.m. Thursday the 4th of May. One meteor was so large that it cast
an orange glow against the mountain. "The animals were going wild, the
horses were bucking and dogs were barking and howling and then, all of
a sudden right above my house, there was a big bright light and then
just 'Bang!' And it lit up the five acres that are around us, and then
I covered my eyes like this because it was bright and when it got past
I saw there was a tail and it just went 'Shhhh' toward the Hueco
Mountains."


2006 - 2 June - Minnesota, Wisconsin,
North Dakota and Canada - a fireball was spotted estimated to be some
20 miles above the Earth's surface. A sonic boom was heard in the Lake
of the Woods area of Minnesota, so there may be some pieces of the
meteor that survived the fall.


2006 - 7 June - Norway - A large
meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact
an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. The
meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, June
7th, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky
above the Arctic Circle. 'I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky,
and this became a light with a tail of smoke. I heard the bang seven
minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of
dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away.' The meteor struck a
mountainside in Reisadalen. The country's leading astronomer said he
expects the meteor to prove to be the largest to hit Norway in modern
times, even bigger than the 198-pound Alta meteorite of 1904. 'If the
meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to
the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in
explosive force we may be able to compare it to the bomb.'


2006 - 25 June - Pennsylvania -
Residents of the Tuscarawas Valley who heard a deafening boom about
12:40 a.m. Monday the 19th and stepped outside likely saw what one
person described as "a marvelous fireball with red streaks in the sky."
It probably was a meteor falling through the atmosphere. Numerous
callers reported a large red fireball. Several said their homes shook.
New Philadelphia police said they received reports from several callers
who witnessed the fireball or heard the boom. One woman described it as
"a blue light that lit up the sky and went down." Police in Dover said
multiple callers reported they heard a loud bang and something rattled
their windows. Air Traffic Command in Washington, D.C. confirmed that
Cleveland's control center was checking into a meteor shower that
occurred within its air space.


2006 - 10 July - South Africa - An ice
ball that landed in Douglasdale, South Africa, might be one of the
first 'megacryometeors' recorded in Africa. The ice ball, which landed
on the pavement in suburban Douglasdale last week, was about the size
of a microwave oven. The impact of the ice ball's fall created a small
crater on the pavement, which was covered with pieces of broken ice.
Despite sharing many chemical characteristics with hail, ice balls are
formed under clear-sky conditions. Ice balls have been recorded since
the 19th century. They have the potential to damage people, buildings
and cars, but no injuries were reported as a result of this one.


2006 - 14 July - Norway - At 10:20am a
bus driver from Ås, south of Oslo, was sitting in the outhouse at his
holiday cabin near Rygge on the 14th of July when he heard an enormous
blast. Right after that, some particles from a meteor that exploded
over the Oslo area rained down just outside. He said he didn't think
too much about the surprising blast at first, dismissing it as probably
coming from an exercise at a nearby military air station at Rygge. But
he said the blast and the rumbling it caused was terrible. He was just
hooking the door when he heard a new noise, a whistling sort of sound,
followed by a new bang on some aluminum plates lying near the outhouse.
Sure enough, it was particles from a meteor that exploded somewhere
over the Oslo Fjord area on Friday morning. Astronomers confirm
Martinsen's remarkable discovery of meteorite particles on his
property. "This is Norway's 14th meteorite, but we've never heard about
a meteorite landing so close to a person before." -- A family from
Moss, south of Oslo, came home from their summer holidays to find a
meteorite in their garden. It's another remnant of the meteor that
exploded over the Oslo Fjord area on the 14th of JUly. Astronomers in
Norway are calling the discovery of meteorites around southeast Norway
"incredible," and urge local residents to keep looking for more. "Two
branches on our plum tree were broken. I lifted them up and there lay
this stone." It had made a hole measuring about seven centimeters in
his lawn.


2006 - 12 Sept. - New Zealand - A
small piece of rock that has been found in a paddock in New Zealand may
be a piece of the meteorite that streaked across the sky there Tuesday
the 12th, panicking residents who flooded emergency hotlines. A farmer
found a 10cm by 5cm piece of "almost weightless" rock in his field
today near the town of Dunsandel, south of Christchurch. It has been
sent to New Zealand's National Radiation Laboratory for analysis. The
meteorite tore across the sky over the northern half of the South
Island in the afternoon, leaving a bright, burning trial behind it and
causing a sonic boom that rattled houses and shook the ground. It then
apparently erupted into a fireball, sending forth a thick puff of
smoke. People were sent running from the homes and offices when they
heard the boom, fearing buildings could collapse. The sonic boom was
registered on earthquake-detecting equipment. The boom meant the
meteorite was probably travelling "very low". It was probably about the
size of a basketball as it shredded through the sky and became a
"terminal fireball" at a speed of about 40,000kph. "If this had
happened at night, it would have lit up the whole countryside."


2006 - 10 Oct. - 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.


2006 - 1 Dec. - NASA reports -
Meteoroids are smashing into the Moon a lot more often than anyone
expected. - That's the tentative conclusion of Bill Cooke, head of
NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, after his team observed two
Leonids hitting the Moon on Nov. 17, 2006. "We've now seen 11 and
possibly 12 lunar impacts since we started monitoring the Moon one year
ago," says Cooke. "That's about four times more hits than our computer models predicted."


2007 - January - Altai Region, Russia
- Another expedition arrived to the Altai Republic to search for
meteorite, which has fallen this January, and to talk with people, who
witnessed this event. Expedition crew will visit Uglovsky and
Egorievsky districts, where an unknown celestial body has fallen. -
Later report: Russian social science and research expedition
"Kosmopoisk" has sent four meteorite fragments found in Altai to Moscow
laboratory. Research, carried out in field, showed that there exists
high probability that two stones out of four are real meteorite
fragments. The expedition found a meteorite crater 1.5 kilometer away
from their camp, but nasty weather prevented them from detailed
studying of said crater.


2007 - January - Tampa, Florida - a
200-pound chunk of ice streaked through the clear Florida sky and
landed in the back seat of a really nice red Ford Mustang. The car was
totaled.


2007 - 4 Jan - Authorities were trying
to identify a mysterious metallic object that crashed through the roof
of a house in eastern New Jersey.


Nobody was injured when the golf-ball sized object, weighing
nearly as much as a can of soup, struck the home and embedded itself in
a wall Tuesday night. ... Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall
every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of
astronomy at Rutgers University. "It's not all that uncommon to have
rocks rain down from heaven," said Pryor, who had not seen the object
that struck the Monmouth County home. "These are usually rocky or a
mixture of rock and metal."


2007 - 10 January - Russia - a
meteorite fell in January in the Altai Territory in southern Siberia
and searchers found an extraterrestrial substance which could be
meteorite fragments. "We have collected about 50 samples, and vitreous
threads (traces of comet substance) were discovered in the first of
them using a microscope." Local motorists and residents witnessed the
impact of a fiery ball, which eventually ended in a loud sound
resembling an explosion.


2007 - 24 Jan. - Virginian, U.S. -
Giles County residents were a little shaken after a tremor-like event,
others say they heard a loud "thunder-like" sound. Virginia Tech
researchers say they received several calls about a meteor sighting the
same time of the tremors. The bizarre incident took place around 8pm.
Researchers say the seismic station in Giles County did get a very
short but intense seismic signal.


2007 - 31 Jan. - Turkey - Police were
inundated with calls from scores of people from Didim to Bodrum after
they heard a big bang and a flash of light across the skies. The
flashing green, yellow and red lights were from a meteorite which
crashed through the earth's atmosphere and landed in Yesilkent. A
startled man revealed that the rock had smashed a hole in the ground at
the Green Park Complex, at Yesilkent, narrowly missing him by ten
metres. Police reported that people from Bodrum, Milas and Didim had
heard a bang and seen the flashing light across the skies at about
5:30pm.


2007 - 4 Feb. - Midwestern U.S. -
Scores of people all over the Midwest and Upper Midwestern United
States reported seeing flames and fiery explosions in the sky Sunday
night. From southeastern Wisconsin to as far as Des Moines, Iowa and
St. Louis, people reported seeing balls of fire, possibly meteors,
streaking across the sky on Sunday night. "We had a pilot reporting
seeing a meteor". Reports came from residents in central Missouri,
Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin and Minnesota.


2007 - 15 Feb. - Ohio - Something
happened at around 9 p.m. that a lot of people heard. But nobody seems
to have any idea what it was. "It" was a loud bang, something loud
enough to be heard all over the county, and loud enough to make small
objects move in houses. Rumors range from an earthquake to a meteor
strike, a sonic boom to something ice-related. While we may never know
for sure, at least one scientist believes the meteor could be the
answer. There's no evidence to suggest an earthquake could have caused
the bang, especially not over the range specified. One man said he saw
a meteor with a relatively long trail, with red, green and gold
coloration. It was headed east to west and lasted about three seconds;
after it faded, the sonic boom washed over him. "I saw it first. It was
the most eerie, cool, scary, wonderful thing. You just see this dragon
tail going across the sky. All of a sudden, everything goes boom."


2007 - 22 Feb. - Rajasthan, India -
Three people were killed and four injured in a mysterious blast in a
village in India's northern Rajasthan state Thursday that villagers
claim was caused by a meteorite, news reports said. Residents of
Banchola village in Bundi district, about 200 kilometres south of
Rajasthan capital Jaipur, said the victims were sitting with some iron
scrap in an open field when an "object" fell from the sky and hit them,
IANS news agency reported.


2007 - 23 Feb. - Panama - Panamanian
geologists found a meteorite at Rio Hato, a coastal town west of the
capital Panama City. The meteorite fell onto Rio Hato's beach on
Friday. The landing was witnessed by a security guard, who described it
as a ball of fire crashing down from the sky onto the sand. The 4.2 kg
red object, measuring 20 cm in diameter, was to be X-rayed for more
details. The meteorite shows burn marks on its exterior, and appears to
be mainly carbon-based, in contrast to most meteorites, which mainly
contain iron.


2007 - 15 Mar. - What Richard
Yip-Chuck saw fall into a farmer's field Sunday evening looked like a
long, white ball with orange sparks shooting off the back. The Holland
Landing resident was driving along Hwy. 7 with his wife, Ele, and sons
Kyle, 12, and 10-year-old Dylan, when they saw what looked like a
fireball plummet to earth.


2007 - 29 Mar - Flaming debris of a
possible meteor almost hit a plane - The pilots of a Chilean passenger
jet reported seeing flaming debris fall past their aircraft as it
approached the airport at Auckland, New Zealand. The captain "made
visual contact with incandescent fragments several kilometres away".
The pilots reported the near-miss to air traffic controllers,
reportedly saying the noise of the debris breaking the sound barrier
could be heard above the roar of his aircraft's engines.


2007 - 10 May - Spain - Fireball
spotted across central Spain. Scientists think some fragments may have
fallen to earth in the Ciudad Real area. A fireball fell across the
centre of the country on Thursday night with sightings in Cuenca,
Toledo, Ciudad Real and Valladolid. Scientists believe it was a
meteorite and say it's quite a normal phenomenon, possibly a fragment
from a comet which fell from earth orbit.


2007 - 14 May - Hubbardton, Vermont -
Recorded as a 2.1 temblor on the Richter scale, a quake hit at 4:10
a.m. One Hubbardton resident who said he was wide awake at 4 a.m. said
he not only felt the earthquake, he saw what caused it. He said he saw
something in the sky to the northeast of Lake Hortonia. He believes he
saw a meteorite and that's what triggered the earthquake. "It was like
a streak of fire. I've heard meteorites hit before and that was what it
sounded like. It was no earthquake, it was a meteor."


2007 - 26 May - Woburn, Mass. - Meteorite punched a hole through a warehouse roof.


2007 - 7 June - Norway - A large
meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact
an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. The
meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, June
7th, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky
above the Arctic Circle. 'I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky,
and this became a light with a tail of smoke. I heard the bang seven
minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of
dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away.' The meteor struck a
mountainside in Reisadalen. The country's leading astronomer said he
expects the meteor to prove to be the largest to hit Norway in modern
times, even bigger than the 198-pound Alta meteorite of 1904. 'If the
meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to
the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in
explosive force we may be able to compare it to the bomb.'


2007 - 10 June - Sri Lanka - The
strange objects that lit the night skies on June 10 have now been
confirmed as meteors. "This is the first time that meteors of such
magnitude have fallen in Sri Lanka. The shockwaves and vibrations have
been heard throughout the country, from Galle to Puttalam. A Senior
Consultant believes that two large meteoroids entered the atmosphere,
the larger one splitting into two and the smaller one into about 25
fragments. The loud explosions were some of the particles exploding,
probably about 50 to 100 km above the ground. In Kovinna, Andiambalama,
at 9.05 p.m. on the 10th, a woman had noticed something unusual in the
western sky. A bright light, almost as large as the full moon, appeared
to be moving towards her in a wide arc. Alarmed by thoughts of
terrorist air attacks, she called out to her neighbour. Together they
watched fearfully as the glowing object drew closer, landed on the roof
and vanished completely. A few minutes later the air vibrated with a
loud explosion. The next day they discovered that parts of the asbestos
sheets on the roof were charred and cracked. A few pieces of rock and
sand were scattered around the damaged area. Similar incidents were
reported around the country that night. Several people in areas such as
Puttalam, Maho and Bingiriya also noted the appearance of the bright
light in the sky as well as the loud explosion. In Kimbulapitiya a
woman watched a flaming object land on a house and heard the booming
sounds soon afterwards. In Campbell Place, Dehiwala, the roofs of two
buildings were damaged, and a loud noise was heard. "24 asbestos sheets
were broken."


2007 - 6 July - Cali, Colombia, S.
America - an incoming object broke apart in the lower atmosphere with a
trio of ferocious explosions that shattered windows and shook the
ground violently. Moments later, stones rained from the sky and pelted
homes in the poor barrios surrounding the city. Some smashed through
the roofs of homes. Recovered objects were chondritic (rocky) meteorite.


2007 - 26 July - Iowa - 5:30AM - A
Dubuque woman said she is lucky to be alive after a 50 pound chunk of
white ice crashed through the roof of her home, landing about 15 feet
away from where she was standing. She said it sounded like a bomb
exploded when the massive ball of ice hit her roof. Other large chunks
of ice fell from the sky in this northeast Iowa city, tearing through
nearby trees. Dubuque had clear skies at the time the ice fell.


2007 - 1 August - India - Hotipur
(Sangrur) village near Khanauri hit the headlines when a meteorite fell
in the fields on Wednesday night, leaving many villagers baffled. The
police have taken possession of the 8-cm meteorite to hand it over to a
three-member team of Geological Survey of India. Curious villagers
queued up in the fields to see the "heavenly object", while the farmer,
who was the only witness to the fall of the "fireball", said, "I got
scared of the big fireball that was coming my way at 8:45 pm on
Wednesday night. I ran for cover as I felt that it will fall on me."
(May be hoax.)


2007 - 11 Aug. - 12:09 am -
Representatives with the Sonora Police Department and both the Tuolumne
and Calaveras County Sheriff's Departments say they fielded numerous
calls early in the morning in regards to a "loud boom," and "structures
shaking." There were several calls from residents who reported seeing
"a blue light," just before the "loud boom." The incident reportedly
occurred at 12:09am. The Police Department notes that it also received
a call from a resident in Tuolumne, in which a female reported seeing
what she thought was fireworks, and then something spiraling over her
house. Early indication from the law enforcement agencies is that the
loud boom was somehow the result of a meteor shower.


2007 - 15 Sept. - Peruvian Highlands -
The meteorite's impact sent debris flying up to 820 feet (250 meters)
away, with some material landing on the roof of the nearest home 390
feet (120 meters) from the crater. Nearby residents who visited the
impact crater complained of headaches and nausea.


2007 - 3 Oct. - Minnesota - Shortly
after 2 p.m., people across the Twin Cities reported seeing a
"metallic" object or "flaming ball" falling from the sky. Broadcasters
and emergency dispatchers got hundreds of calls from people who saw the
object traveling from the northeast to the southwest. Residents of Lyon
County in far southwestern Minnesota reported a loud boom that might
have been connected with the sightings in the Twin Cities. A man who
lives near the town of Amiret says it shook his house and sounded like
a sonic boom from an F-14 breaking the sound barrier at close range.
Coincidentally, at the same time, drivers in the Twin Cities metro were
dodging debris in the middle of Interstate 94. Some drivers said the
debris fell from the sky shortly after 2:00 p.m. Wednesday.


2008 - 31 January - Didim - POLICE
were inundated with calls from scores of people from Didim to Bodrum
after they heard a big bang and a flash of light across the skies. A
startled Abdullah Arıtürk revealed that the rock had smashed a hole in
the ground at the Green Park Complex, at Yeşilkent, narrowly missing
him by ten metres.


2008 - 19 Feb. - An apparent meteor
streaked through the sky over the Pacific Northwest early Tuesday,
drawing reports of bright lights and sonic booms in parts of
Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Although a witness reported seeing the
object strike the Earth in a remote part of Adams County, in southeast
Washington, it still has not been found. People in Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana and British Columbia reported seeing the bright fireball
streaking across the sky about 5:30 a.m. At least one person said the
object exploded on impact in eastern Washington and another report from
southeastern Washington said someone felt tremors from the blast.


2008 - 5 Mar. - The Physics and
Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in
Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate
Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and
meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST
these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has
also received a number of calls and emails from people who actually saw
the light.


2008 - 8 Mar. - Turkey - A resident of
Yaka said he heard a loud roaring noise at around 11:20 a.m. on the day
the meteorite fell, sounding as if "a plane had crashed."


"We were amazed to find such a small stone after that thunderous
sound. It was black and about 40 centimeters in diameter, weighing
three kilograms at most," another said, adding that the meteorite
opened a small crater in the ground and created a cloud of dust.


2008 - 10 Mar. - Sudbury, Canada -
great balls of fire were seen falling from the sky - While most
sightings were reported around 1:30 p.m. near Sudbury, Hagar, Highway
69 North and North Bay, Wayne Lachance spotted something in the sky
earlier in the morning. Lachance was driving home to Massey after a
night shift at Vale Inco Ltd. when something caught his eye around 7:30
a.m. "I thought it was a real bright star," he said. "It was getting
brighter and coming down with sparks." Lachance arrived home and looked
outside his bedroom window to see "spirals of smoke" falling.


2008 - 13 Mar. - Meteorite videotaped hitting the Moon.


2008 - 6 April - Argentina - The space
rock reportedly crashed late Sunday somewhere in Entre Rios Province,
some 260 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, reports the daily Clarin,
which quoted a witness, Milton Blumhagen, a student and astronomy buff:
"For three or four seconds I saw an object in flames, changing color
until it turned blue when it approached the ground.'' A fire department
source said the impact was felt for miles around. No damage was
reported.


2008 - 15, 16, 18 April - Illinois -
Maybe we had a comet fragment impact or two or three over a period of
several nights? Perhaps a couple of overhead explosions and then,
later, a ground impact. Read the following stories and judge for
yourself:


That would explain booms and earthquake and lights in the sky spread out over three days. Damage Control: Mysterious booms, lights over Indiana were just F-16s



A sonic boom and fireballs and flaming debris that Kokomo-area
residents reported seeing in the sky Wednesday night prompted Howard
County's police agencies to conduct a two-hour search for what many
residents thought was a crashed aircraft.


As it turned out, the fireballs were flares fired by F-16s that are
part of the 122nd Fighter Wing, an Indiana Air National Guard unit
based at Fort Wayne International Airport. ...


Staff Sgt. Jeff Lowry with Indiana National Guard's headquarters in
Indianapolis said the jets taking part in the training are not supposed
to exceed the speed of sound, which is about 760 mph, because
supersonic speeds produce sonic booms.


He said the 122nd's commander, Col. Jeff Soldner, will investigate
why at least one jet reached supersonic speeds Wednesday night over
Howard and Tipton counties, and also on Tuesday night over the
Logansport area, shaking the ground below. ...


He said F-16 training often involves the aircraft dropping flares
from more than 10,000 feet above the ground, a technique that can allow
the jets to evade heat-seeking missiles in combat. ...


Logansport Police Chief A.J. Rozzi said he heard a loud sonic boom
on Tuesday night, and then heard the sound of a jet high overheard. He
said residents also reported seeing fire streaks in the sky.


He said it is common for the 122nd to conduct missions in the area
and believes F-16 training almost certainly explains the sights and
sounds.


"They've been doing that training for quite a while. I don't know
what maneuvers they're actually doing, but they do shoot out streaks of
light," he said.



5.4 earthquake rocks Illinois; felt 350 miles away



A 5.4 earthquake that appeared to rival the strongest recorded in
the region rocked people awake up to 350 miles away early Friday,
surprising residents unaccustomed to such a powerful Midwest temblor.


The quake just before 4:37 a.m. was centered 6 miles from West
Salem, Ill., and 66 miles from Evansville, Ind. It was felt in such
distant cities as Chicago, Cincinnati and Milwaukee, 350 miles north of
the epicenter, but there were no early reports of injuries or
significant damage. ....


"You could hear a roaring sound and the whole motel shook, waking up
the guests,'' Vibha Ambelal, manager of the Super 8 Motel in Mount
Carmel, Illinois, near the epicenter, said in a telephone interview."



2008 - 17 April - Argentina - A fireball fell somewhere in or nearby Entre Rios, 260 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. Mariano Peter from the Entrerriana Astronomy Association
said there were reports from 4 witnesses. One of them described, "a
strong light that passed at a high speed through the sky and at a low
altitude, going towards the south and then it fell in the distance."
Another witness said, "it was very bright and it changed color between
green and red."


The first fireball was reported in Entre Rios on April 6th, 2008
(see above). A witness said: "For three or four seconds I saw an object
in flames, changing color until it turned blue when it approached the
ground.'' A fire department source said the impact was felt for miles around. The next day a fragment of the space rock was recovered.


And now: Smoke chokes Argentina's capital



Buenos Aires, Argentina -- Smoke blanketed the Argentine capital
Friday as brush fires apparently set deliberately consumed thousands of
acres in the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Ríos.


The smoke, from about 300 fires, is blamed for at least two fatal traffic accidents this week that left eight people dead.


Sections of major highways and the Buenos Aires port, among the
busiest in the world, have been closed. Incoming flights to the city's
domestic airport, Jorge Newbery Airpark, have been diverted.


The Argentine government has blamed farmers looking to clear their
land for crops and grazing for the fires, which are estimated to cover
173,000 acres (70,000 hectares).


"This is the largest fire of this kind that we've ever seen," Argentine Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said Thursday.


Randazzo called the situation a "disaster."


As of Friday morning, little progress had been made extinguishing the blazes. [...]



~~~


As I said, this list is not exhaustive, though I am exhausted from
transcribing and pulling the data together! In addition to updating
this list from other sources over the next few days, I hope that
readers will send in their finds and we can have the most complete list
available anywhere, excluding, of course, the classified data that we
won't be getting from our governments.


Meanwhile, of course, we begin to understand why Bill Gates -
formerly a regular guy turned elitist - has invested in his Seed Bank.


Ah, the joys of being at the top and the perils of being at the bottom of the pyramidal hierarchy on this planet!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderfull story, I really enjoyed it! We need more people to get into this kind of information gathering. I really appreciate how stories from ancient times, sometimes called "Myths" can shed light on our history. So many things in the bible are taken litteraly without considering they probably had perfectly logical origins, it doesn't nessesarily take anything away form the biblical stories, just sheds "new light" on these "old stories". Makes perfect sense to me! After all the bible itself tells us "God works in mysterious ways" does it not! And it's not only the Bible that has these stories, it's so many other anchient scripts too. Shouldn't biblical scholars look at this in this "new light" too?
Thanks Ray

Anonymous said...

My englisch is not that good that I understand 100% of your story. But I think you did a great job telling us this.

Lets hope people dont believe this right away but start to think outside the (government)box and talk about this without being scared of what other people think how they should think.

Keep Rockin'!