[meteorite-list] Norton County: Rocks from Space Picture of the Day - January 06, 2008

From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: 06 Jan 2008 15:46:08 UT
Message-ID: <DIIE.000000A3000024FF_at_paulinet.de>

http://www.rocksfromspace.org/January_6_2008.html

Hello Svend, Michael Johnson, and List,

Wow! What a fragment! ... sayeth the happy owner of a modest 4.1-gram
piece of the Norton County aubrite purchased from Walter Zeitschel in 1987.

But, to round it out, here's something from the ol' days of "Meteoritics":

(Meteoritics 28-3, 1993, pp. 271-273):

MARVIN U.B.: The Norton County-Furnas County Meteorite Fall, February 18, 1948

A spectacular fireball accompanied by violent explosions streaked northward over Kansas
at 5:00 p.m. on February 18, 1948. One hour later, LaPaz was informed of the event by the
Civil Air Patrol, who thought at first that a plane had crashed. LaPaz followed up sightings
through Civil Air Patrol channels, concluded that a meteorite had fallen, and within two weeks,
calculated a probable shower ellipse near the Kansas-Nebraska line.
Meanwhile, the Niningers heard the news, went to the scene, and talked with many people, but
a mid-winter blizzard forced them to leave before completing a search for meteorites. A farmer
living in Norton County, Kansas, found the first stone late in the following spring, and after that
many more were found in the same general area. In August, a farmer working his fields in Furnas
County, Nebraska, a few miles north of the Kansas-Nebraska line, felt his tractor tilt steeply and
found it perched at the edge of a hole 10 ft. deep with a huge stone at the bottom. The stone proved
to be a magnificent flight-oriented cone weighing nearly one ton. This piece holds the record as the
largest stony meteorite specimen in North America.
Nininger asserted later that he had alerted the farmer to look for large stones on his property, and so
the farmer had called him to report his discovery. Nininger traveled to the farm as soon as possible
and climbed down into the hole to collect small chips that lay on the bottom and to prepare to collect
the huge stone. But this stone lay within the strewnfield predicted by LaPaz who felt that his map
together with his own lines of communication constituted a valid claim. Presently, Nininger heard
voices and looked up to see LaPaz and Leonard peering over the edge of the hole. LaPaz' party of five
soon was joined by a party of four from the Nebraska State and University Museums. LaPaz claimed
prior rights to the stone, based on his calculations of the find site and the notice that had been sent
to him. Nininger claimed finders' rights as well as what amounted to squatters' rights. As neither man
would yield, permission was obtained from the absentee landlord to hold an auction in the farmhouse
at night. Together, the Institute of Meteoritics and the University of Nebraska outbid Nininger, who
left the scene. The stone was securely wrapped in burlap, coated with plaster of Paris, and lifted out
of the hole by a crane. It then was loaded on a truck for a slow 550-mile drive to the Institute of
Meteoritics in Albuquerque.
The following September, when the Society met at the Institute of Meteoritics, Leonard (1948a) gave
a detailed account of the Norton County shower including the discovery and collection of the Furnas
stone. He pointed out that this was the first strewnfield to cross a state line and that therefore the
meteorite must bear the compound name "Norton County, Kansas-Furnas County, Nebraska meteorite."
Needless to say, few curators or catalogers were persuaded of such a necessity and so the meteorite
quickly became known as "Norton County." Leonard did not mention Nininger in his report. Nininger
presented his own account and protested Leonard's failure to mention his presence at the site.
Letters in the Society Archives show that a month later, on October 25, 1948, Nininger wrote to LaPaz
referring to the newly issued Catalogue of the Institute of Meteoritics and requesting specimens of
Norton County which displayed a range of types and conditions of the fusion crust to use in his studies
of meteorite surface features. In reply, LaPaz sent him a copy of the Institute's "Preliminary Application
Form for Loan and/or Donation of Meteoritical Materials." It stated that one of the purposes of the
Institute was to:

.. make avaliable, without cost, to nuclear physicists, ballisticians, aerodynamisticians, and other
investigators... specimens they might require for experimental purposes thus enabling scientists to
escape from a state of affairs which has led two prominent mineralogists to complain that:

'Meteorites are held at such an artificially high value by dealers and collectors as to make it difficult
to secure any large quantity of any fall.'

Thus, in order to obtain specimens, a petitioner would be asked to sign "No" to the following questions:

1. Has an admission fee ever been charged, or is such a fee now charged, or is it contemplated to charge
such a fee of the general public for admittance to any meteoritical exhibits housed in or in the possession
of the institution of which you are a representative?

2. Does the institution you represent or do you or your assistants now engage in the sale of jewelry made
from meteorites (by some described as "otherworld jewelry") or of other objects d'art such as book ends,
bases for fountain pen sets ... from meteoritical materials... or is the sale of such objects contemplated
in the future?

We need not ask whether or not Nininger received his requested specimens of Norton County from the
Institute of Meteoritics.

LaPaz evidently felt deeply that meteorities should be raised from the realm of dealers, hobbyists, and
amateur collectors and established as an academic discipline to be pursued in universities, preferably
by professors like himself who held Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, physics, or astronomy. Not only did
he deplore Nininger's selling of meteorites at his museum, he was scandalized when Nininger brought
specimens to Society meetings and offered them for sale. In all probability, LaPaz saw dealers as posing
a genuine threat to research opportunities by inflating the prices of meteorites. He may also have felt a
whiff of the disdain toward "men-in-trade" that was traditional among gentlemanly scholars on both
sides of the Atlantic Ocean.


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Received on Sun 06 Jan 2008 10:46:08 AM PST