[meteorite-list] What's Your Favourite Ordinary Chondrite?

From: Rob Wesel <Nakhladog_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:47 2004
Message-ID: <001501c2e8fb$392ea9f0$4e9fe70c_at_GOLIATH>

I am having some trouble with posting this to the list as I was sending my
reply in HTML. Now that I have corrected this, please disregard future posts
from me with the same title should they get through.

I tend to lean toward those that have caused some sort of chaos, be it
historical, physical, or social. Misunderstood portents of danger, doom or
divinity, killers, destroyers.
Many have already been listed but there are a couple that have yet gone
unmentioned:

Mbale
Factories, schools and even the local prison were pelted by the terrifying
shower of stones, a small boy was struck, but not hurt. Many of the
meteorites were later recovered and ground into a paste that was either
ingested or applied on the body by townspeople who believed the stones were
a cure for AIDS...sent by God.

Claxton
Don Richardson was stepping out of his trailer when a whistling that
reminded him of an incoming mortar round in Vietnam made him flinch. With a
loud bang
something struck a mailbox 112 feet away and smashed it to the ground.

And even our newest Thuathe
Malineo Mantsoe of IIa Sofonia describes her experience: When the loud noise
occurred overhead, she ran to the back of her dwelling expecting to see a
thunderstorm, but there was none. She came to the front, just in time to
hear wheeee-bang as a stone fell into her cooking area just in front of her,
cracking one of her water carriers. No villager could have thrown a stone so
fast in daylight, and it must have been a truly powerful tikoloske (GREMLIN)
to have done such a thing in broad daylight! Fortunately she was prepared
for such occasions, because she had a supply of holy water blessed in
church. She sprinkled it on the stone and elsewhere around her cooking area
and house...

The clear winner, and worthy of mention again is Ensisheim
On November 7, 1492, near noon, a loud explosion announced the fall of a
280-pound stone meteorite in a wheat field near the village of Ensisheim in
the province of Alsace, France, which at the time was part of Germany. An
old woodcut depicting the scene shows the fall witnessed by two people
emerging from a forest. Actually, a young boy was the only eyewitness. He
led the townspeople to the field, where the meteorite lay in a hole 3 feet
deep. After it was retrieved, people began to chip off pieces for souvenirs
until stopped by the town magistrate. The townspeople accepted the stone as
an object of supernatural origin. King Maximilian of Germany, passing
through Ensisheim three weeks later, examined the meteorite and proclaimed
it a sign of God's wrath against the French, who were warring with the Holy
Roman Empire. Maximilian ordered the great stone displayed in the parish
church in Ensisheim as a reminder of God's intervention in the conflict.
There it remained, chained to the church, until the French Revolution, when
it was confiscated from the church by French revolutionaries and placed on
display in a new national museum in nearby Colmar. In the museum, French
scientists removed numerous pieces from the main mass for study. Many of
those pieces eventually wound up in museums around the world. Ten years
later, it was returned to the church in Ensisheim.

Oh how I love the carnage. And dare I deviate from the OC class and offer
you a taste of....Elbogen
The population of Elbogen recalled several stories in connection with the
iron. It was supposed to date back to a time when Elbogen Castle was the
seat of the deputy of the Emperor (Burggraf); if this is correct, it must
date back to about 1350-1430, since this was the only period when the castle
was so used. On one occasion the hated Burggraf, upon summoning his serfs to
service, was transformed to a piece of iron, or, as some thought, a
bell-bronze. This piece of iron is the meteorite Elbogen which, since that
time, has also been called "Der verwünschte Burggraf" or "The bewitched
burgrave." The mass was preserved in the basement of the castle, and it was
believed that if by some misfortune it was removed, it had the power to come
back again.


Oh, and Mocs, because it's fun to say with a Dracula accent.

--
Rob Wesel
------------------
We are the music makers...and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Willy Wonka, 1971

Received on Wed 12 Mar 2003 07:55:20 PM PST