[meteorite-list] My First Piece - Allende - O.R. Norton

From: Bernd Pauli HD <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:55:40 2004
Message-ID: <3C36DFBC.1406B821_at_lehrer1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Fred Olsen wrote:

> a traveling rock salesman stopped at my rock shop "The Quarry"
> in Gainesville, Florida in the spring of 1969. This gentleman
> (I wish I knew his name) had just driven in an old stationwagon
> from Mexico with a load of minerals from the mines and a box
> of fresh meteorites from the Pueblito de Allende to sell.


Hello Fred, O.R. Norton, and List,

When I read Fred's comments above, I instantly felt I had heard a
similar story somewhere before. But where ...? Yes, in O.R. Norton's
RFS (I + II). Could that have been the very same Frederick Pough?

"In the summer of 1969, I was running a small planetarium on the
University of Nevada campus in Reno. Late one afternoon, a visitor
came to my office and introduced himself as Frederick Pough. He
asked if I would be interested in buying about 100 pounds of car-
bonaceous chondrite meteorites ... Now there was this stranger
telling me he had a hundred pounds of carbonaceous meteorites in
the trunk of his car and they were for sale! ... We walked out to
the parking lot ... Pough lifted the trunk lid and there, carelessly
wrapped in old El Paso newspapers ... were dozens of the world's
ugliest-looking rocks ... And the meteorites? These were freshly
fallen specimens specimens from the now-famous Allende, Mexico
fall ... I did indeed purchase the trunk-load of Allende ..."

(Excerpts from O.R. Norton (1998) Rocks
>From Space, 2nd edition, pp. 79-81).


Best wishes,

Bernd
Received on Sat 05 Jan 2002 06:13:00 AM PST