WINNETKA'S METEOR FIZZLES OUT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 28

WINNETKA'S METEOR FIZZLES OUT

Since the night of April 4 the good villagers of Winnetka have been nursing an interplanetary illusion, says the "Chicago Tribune." They were certain that the white hot gob of metal that fell dut of the sky was a meteor. And only one other town in Illinois, Tilden. in Randolph County, had ever found a meteor.

Policemen Lester Parker and Thomas Schultz were sure. They saw a blinding flash of light streak towards the earth, heard an explosion, and rushed up to find a glowing bit of metal on the parkway of Green Bay Road, south of Winnetka Avenue.

; Dr. Henry Nichols, curator of geology at the Field Museum, was the first to dash cold water on the village hopes. A careful examination dis-

closed to Dr. Nichols that tiie meteor was a clinker of some sort.

But the policemen were still puzzled. If not a meteor, what was a clinker doing falling out of Heaven? Now they have found the answer in the story by Henry Meyers.

Meyers, who lives at 1638 Sherman Avenue, Northbrook, recently received from a fellow-German war veteran a relic of the war. It was a leiichtpistole. Instead of bullets it fires a charge which, when it explodes, causes a blinding light. In wartime it was used to illuminate troop movements.

Eager to demonstrate his new possession, Meyers took it to the home of friends at High Street. Meyers believed the pistol might shoot at the most 50 feet. He aimed it over a vacant lot in the rear of the house.