HISTORICAL OCCURRENCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25736, 6 January 1945, Page 6

HISTORICAL OCCURRENCES

Aerolites, masses of metal or stone, have fallen on the earth at various times. The British Museum (states the Evening Post) has some 300 specimens of which nearly 200 were seen to fall There are sacred stones, such as the holy Kaaba of Mecca, venerated by Mohammedans, which are believed to have fallen from heaven. They may, in fact, have descended as aerolites.

Explosions sometimes occur in connection with the fall bf meteors. On April 26, 1803 near L’Aigle, in Normandy, a brilliant fireball was seen traversing the air at great speed at about 1 o’clock In the afternoon. A violent explosion followed and thousands of stones, one 81b in weight, fell to the earth. On February 10 1896, a large meteorite exploded with prodigious noise over Madrid, and on April 20. 1876, a mass of meteoritic iron ore more than 71b in weight fell at Rowton, Shropshire, accompanied by an explosion. On September 4, 1887, a large aerolite fell at Krasnolobodsk, in Central Russia, accompanied by a loud explosion. Early one morning in the winter of 1916-17 some members of the New Zealand Divisional Signal Company stationed at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, saw a great bluish-coloured meteor, which burst with a loud explosion. In Mexico some years ago a large meteorite fell, and if) more recent years a tremendous mass of meteoric iron and stone crashed to the earth in Siberia. Meteoritic falls are independent of thunderstorms and all other terrestrial circumstances; they occur at all hours of the day and night, and at all seasons of the year; they favour no particular latitudes. The area of the earth’s surface occupied by towns and villages being comparatively small, the probability of a shower of stones falling within a town is extremely minute; the likelihood of a living creature being struck is still more remote, although Chinese records of about 644 B.C. tell of a meteorite which fell and killed 10 men, besides smashing a chariot.

On December 13, 1795, a stone fell at Wold Cottage, Yorkshire, 10 yards from a labourer, and at Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, on March 4, 1881, a large stone fell on the railway only 40 yards away from some platelayers. At Krahenberg, Germany, a stone fell within a few paces of a little girl; at Braunau, Austria, a meteoritic mass went through the roof of a cottage; at Macao, in Brazil, some oxen were said to have been killed by a shower of stones, and in 1827, at Mhow, in India, a man was killed by a stone which is a true meteorite, ana is represented by fragments in museum collections. The largest mass of meteoritic iron in the British Natural History Museum is a 3£-ton mass which was found in 1854 at Cranbourne, near Melbourne, Australia. Fireballs, which are regarded as aerolites- whose mass and course are such that they escape actual contact with the earth, are much more numerous than aerolites, and are of great variety in velocity, size, and brilliance. On August 18, 1783, one of great size traversed the air over Europe, from Shetland to Rome, at a height of 50 miles and with a speed of 30 miles per second, giving off a greater light than the full moon. On November 17, 1887, what is described as a splendid specimen crossed westwards over Ireland, at an estimated height of 20 miles, and disappeared above the Atlantic. Many hundreds of others have been observed.