[meteorite-list] Re: 1912 Holbrook Argus

From: Dave Andrews <dandre10_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:48:56 2004
Message-ID: <3B965275.3AD73668_at_cybertrails.com>

Bernd Pauli wrote:

> Thank you for the Holbrook Argus article. It was great fun
> reading it, especially some of the orthographic, linguistic
> and meteor(it)ic oddities, and the choice of words :-)
>

Hi Bernd,
I'm glad you enjoyed. Thank you for reading the article and providing
such an in-depth critique and analysis. Yes, the article is chocked
full of errors and blunders alright, but it also provided some
background as well as some unintentional humor. In 1912, Holbrook
hadn't been out of it's "wild-and-woolly-west-shoot 'em up-days" and
more than likely, many people didn't receive such a great education. I
think people were into cattle, saloons, and guns more than astronomy and
meteoritics. (That's probably still true here today! ;-) The person
who owned the newspaper at that time, more than likely was the editor,
writer, and publisher of it's entire contents. I'm sure it was an out
of this world experience for them all to witness such a spectacle as the
fall.

> > Report was received Wednesday that a big meteor fell at what appeared to
> > be six or eight miles north of Cosnino at about 9 o'clock Tuesday evening.
>
> > Many Holbrook citizens witnessed this luminous
> > ball on its terrific earthward flight.
>
> "At about 9 o'clock"? A second report seems to have been mixed into
> the report on Holbrook because the Holbrook shower occurred at about
> 19:15 hrs.
>
I don't know why the author included this paragraph without a little
more explanation or break in the story, but the Holbrook fall occurred
on a Friday evening. This seems to be a completely different fireball
siting as this article was published on the following Friday. Cosnino is
about 75 miles west of Holbrook and only about 10 miles east of
Flagstaff, so it is quite possible that some residents here observed
it. They were probably looking up to the sky a little more often now
too. ;-)

I'm glad you enjoyed the article as much as I did. There a few chuckles
to be had from it's reading. But, I guess that's the way they saw it
and described it the best they knew how.

For a little more background on Holbrook and it's wild west history,
here is a link for those who wish to read on. There are also some cool
old photographs here too. It's a shame that the meteorite fall isn't
included in it's history anymore. It seems as if it now is all
forgotten.

http://www.azjournal.com/old_west.htm

Best wishes,
Dave
Received on Wed 05 Sep 2001 12:27:34 PM PDT