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Scientists believe they have found the oldest evidence of a meteorite hitting and killing a person, according to a new report published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
Given the hype around Earth-hitting space rocks, there are surprisingly few meteorite records hitting people, let alone killing someone. But scientists from Ego University and Trakya University in Turkey and the SETI Institute in the United States found an 1888 record from the General Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey containing three manuscripts that appear to count a death from … meteorite event.
The first manuscript, written on September 13, 1888, details a fireball that occurred the previous month at night, over a town whose exact location could not be determined by scientists. Smoke and fire accompanied the flash, and meteorites rained down from the sky for 10 minutes. One man died and another was injured and paralyzed as a result of the event. A second manuscript contained a request sent to Sultan Abdul Hamid II asking what should be done about the event. A third also recounts the events and mentions that a man named Ahmed Munir Pasha sent a letter with “a piece of stone” to the Grand Vizier.
Basically, on August 22, 1888, a meteorite exploded over a village in Turkey, killing one man and paralyzing another. On September 13, a local legislator reported the event; the central government found out on October 8; and the sultan found out on October 9, according to translations in the new document, titled “The Earliest Evidence of a Meteor Death and Injury.”
Translating these documents had its challenges: Ottoman Turkish is difficult to read, scientists explained.. The researchers noted that there are still many more records awaiting digitization, and they has no physical evidence of the impact of 1888t. Anyway, this would be the oldest known Record Definitively declaring that a meteorite killed someone.
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Meteor deaths are extremely rare. More recently, a bus driver in India named V. Kamaraj died in an apparent meteor attack at Natrampalli in 2016, although scientific experts, including NASA, refuted the claim. The National Resource Council Dear 91 people should die in meteorite-related accidents each year, but there are no records of these deaths. Meteorite injury is perhaps more common: More than 1,600 people were injured when a meteorite fell on Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, and famously, Ann Hewlett Hodges was beaten and slightly injured by a meteorite in Alabama in 1954.
The earth is big enough so that the chances of dying from a meteorite impact are extremely slim. Perhaps more concerning, however, are events like Chelyabinsk, where a Bigger rock hits near an urban area. Scientists are working to protect the planet from such a strike, but they to have Lots of work to do.
redon’t worry, you’re probably not going to die since a meteor. Probably not.
