posted on Jun, 12 2009 @ 09:10 AM
Young Gerrit Blank certainly has a hot story to tell his mates. . .The 14 year old was hit by a meteorite which crashed to earth in a ball of flames
at 30,000mph. It bounced off his hand and left a foot wide smouldering crater in the tarmac.
Gerrit was on his way to school when he spotted the fireball hurtling towards him out of the sky. He said, "I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. A
split second later there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. When it hit me it knocked me flying and then it was still going fast enough to
bury itself in the ground. The noise was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards."
Gerrit was left with a three inch scar on his hand. His close encounter came as he left his home in Essen, Germany. Experts were last night examining
the rock. Ansgar Korte from Essen's Walter Hohmann observatory said, "It's a real meteorite. It's very valuable to science."
He added that the chance of being hit by a meteorite are one in a million.
Mr Korte said, " Most don't reach the ground as they disintergrate in the air."
The only other known survivor of a meteorite strike is a woman hit as she slept in her Alabama home in 19 54.
Daily Mirror. 12/6/2009.