UK Women hit by metorite?!

A case of someone being, not fatally, hit by a meteorite!
Only happened last week - doesn't mean anything I think but thought you all might find it an interesting story!

17 August 2004 07:00

It may have been a Martian attack or simply bad luck, but whatever it was it left a Lowestoft woman with a nasty gash on the arm.

Pauline Aguss, 76, was hanging out her washing last week when she received the mysterious cut.

At first the only explanation was her peg bag but, husband Jack was unconvinced and later found a small brown metallic rock, no bigger than a walnut, in the garden � which had the markings of a meteorite.

Click here to go to story

EDIT - Fixed Link

[edit on 18-8-2004 by AgentSmith]

for some reason, I'm not getting a story in your link, but I read about this today. The meteorite was travelling at about 300 mph and she may go in the record books as the first person in the UK to have been hit by one. I thinks she's pretty lucky that it only just skimmed her arm.

so far, in recorded history, no one has been killed by a meteorite. there is a painting or a story from ancient times of someone being killed by one. i want to say ancient greece, but i really don't know.

even so, being hit by one is quite a coincidence, epecially when you figure only about 10 land on Earth a day, with almost all of those falling in uninhabited regions or the oceans.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
even so, being hit by one is quite a coincidence, epecially when you figure only about 10 land on Earth a day, with almost all of those falling in uninhabited regions or the oceans.

Actually Earth's mass increasess hundreds of tons per day because meteoroids/dust entering atmoshere.

And objects sized of walnut are so small that friction slows down their descend so high/fast that they drop to surface like rock which you throw to air. (not causing shooting star)

Originally posted by E_T
Actually Earth's mass increasess hundreds of tons per day because meteoroids/dust entering atmoshere.

And objects sized of walnut are so small that friction slows down their descend so high/fast that they drop to surface like rock which you throw to air. (not causing shooting star)

I meant meteorites the size of a baseball or larger, just something large enough to make a noticeable impact.

the article:
But given the metallic colour and visible crystals on the rock, Neil Bone, director of the meteor division at the British Astronomical Association, said he could not rule out the possibility that the Lowestoft find was genuine.

And it also wouldn't indicate that it was one. A meteorite would have a rather unusual composition tho no? Would an analysis reveal if it was of the 'carbonaceous chondrite' type?

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
so far, in recorded history, no one has been killed by a meteorite.

Dinosaurs