[meteorite-list] Georgia Man Finds Meteorite While Picking Butter Beans

From: Kevin Fly Hill <khill_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:01 2004
Message-ID: <001601c3c5c3$6218e880$6d00a8c0_at_coxinternet.com>

I could afford about a .001 of a gram of that!

Fly Hill

"Jerry Armstrong, an Atlanta man who deals in meteorites told
 him the space debris can bring anywhere from $5 to $1 million a gram"


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 3:28 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Georgia Man Finds Meteorite While Picking Butter
Beans


>
>
> http://www.statesboroherald.net/topstories/story7.html
>
> Space object lands in Bulloch
>
> Picking beans, farmer finds a meteorite
> By HOLLI DEAL BRAGG
> Statesboro Herald
> December 18, 2003
>
> It was the summer of 2000 when local vegetable producer
> Harold Cannon found an odd rock. He tossed it aside. It
> would be three years before he learned he had found a
> meteorite.
>
> Cannon was picking butter beans when his bean picker
> machine lifted the five and a half pound lump. Cannon tossed
> it aside and kept on working.
>
> Three years later, at his wife 's prompting, Cannon decided to
> clean up a bit. Finding the strange rock where he had chunked
> it between two freezers, Cannon decided to chip off a bit
> to see what it looked like inside.
>
> It wasn't an ordinary rock, he said.
>
> "It looked like a rock outside, but it was black inside," he said.
> Cannon had always known the heavy lump was unusual, but never
> dreamed it was out of this world. After taking a hammer to the
> meteorite, he took the meteorite to Georgia Southern University
> professor Dr. Michael Kelley.
>
> "I called him and he told me to bring it in," he said. "He broke
> off a piece and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution.
>
> Kelley sent 25 grams to a friend who works in the Smithsonian
> after he and GSU professor Dr. Pranoti Asher identified the rock
> as a meteorite.
>
> Test results are still pending, but the meteorite has been
> classified as an L-chondrite, he said.
>
> "We're waiting for official classification," he said. "We are
> proposing a name to be approved by an international committee."
>
> Meteorites are named and listed in an international catalog of
> meteorites by a curator in the British Museum, Kelley said.
>
> "This is the first meteorite anyone has ever found in Statesboro,"
> he said. Since meteorites are "usually named for the places they
> landed, we are proposing this meteorite be named Statesboro."
>
> L Chondrite meteorites are the type most commonly found, but
> since only 22 documented meteorites have been discovered in
> Georgia, one of which destroyed a Claxton mailbox in
> 1984, the find is "quite exciting," he said.
>
> "So many (L-chondrite meteorites) have been found they have been
> studied extensively, but this is exciting to us because it's the
> first found here - and it's in our back yard."
>
> Cannon's Produce Farm is located off Joe Hodges Road between
> Statesboro and Pulaski. When he realized his "rock" wasn't
> really a rock, Cannon secured the bulk of the meteorite in
> a bank vault for safety.
>
> While the value of the meteorite has not been determined, Cannon
> said Jerry Armstrong, an Atlanta man who deals in meteorites told
> him the space debris can bring anywhere from $5 to $1 million a gram.
>
> According to various Internet web sites including www.weatherfriend.com
> and www.tucsonshow.com, a witness reported seeing a meteorite fall
> near Claxton around 5:30 p.m. Dec. 10, 1984. According to these sites,
> Vietnam veteran Don Richardson stepped out of his home to hear "a
> whistling noise that reminded him of an incoming mortar round, and
> then a loud bang as the meteorite struck (a) mailbox and knocked it to
> the ground."
>
> The web sites described the meteorite as "chondrite, a type of stony
> meteorite containing millimeter to sub-millimeter spherical olivine and
> pyroxene bodies called chondrules."
>
> The Claxton meteorite was recovered about 11 inches below the ground
> beneath the mailbox, according to web site information.
>
> Cannon said he is looking forward to finding out what the meteorite
> is worth, and that the "rock" is for sale "to the highest bidder"
> after he learns of its worth.
>
> Holli Deal Bragg can be reached at (912) 489-9414.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=27404
Received on Thu 18 Dec 2003 07:02:23 PM PST