[meteorite-list] Meteorite Deaths? Interesting old article-read

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:55:56 -0600
Message-ID: <CC79A9F479B04D6587639724C10CA630_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi, Matt, List,

On September 14, 1511, in Cremona in Lombardy,
Italy, a monk, several birds, and a sheep were killed
by meteorites.

Sometime between 1647 and 1654, two sailors on a
ship en route from Japan to Sicily, while in the Indian
Ocean, were killed by meteorites.

Sometime between 1633 and 1664, a monk in Milan
was killed by a meteorite which severed his femoral
artery, causing him to bleed to death.

Chinese records of lethal impact events include the
death of 10 victims from a meteorite fall in 616 AD, an
"iron rain" in the O-chia district in the 14th century
that killed people and animals, several soldiers injured
by the fall of a "large star" in Ho-t'ao in 1369, and many
others. The most startling is a report of an event in early
1490 in Ch'ing-yang, Shansi, in which many people
were killed when stones "fell like rain." Of the three
known surviving reports of this event, one says that
"over 10,000 people" were killed, and one says that
"several tens of thousands" were killed.

There is a discussion of these and many more such
incidents in John S. Lewis, "Rain of Iron and Ice," 1996.

One could collect pages and pages of early accounts of
meteorite falls and pages more of events that could well
be meteoritic although those that wrote the accounts
did not know of the idea that stones could fall from the
sky. You could fill a book... and people have.

A catalogue of meteorites is not a book of reported falls;
it is a book of collected and curated falls. The oldest
curated stone is NOGATA, which fell May 19, 861 AD.
It hit a shrine and has been kept there ever since. The
meteorite that hit a house in NARA (then the capital
city of Japan) in 764 AD doesn't count because nobody
has it safely curated.

> ...can they be substantiated?

No more or less than the rest of history. They tell me
Julius Caesar was assassinated. That's the story. Most
agree that it happened. No one wrote to deny it. It's the
story I always heard, so I believe it, like I do all the rest
of history. But I wasn't there, I haven't checked the DNA
on the dagger, I don't know where he was buried, I haven't
read the autopsy report. I'm more than a carpet fiber away
from proving the case...

Three Chinese historical chronicles recount the huge
meteorite fall and thousands of deaths in Ch'ing-yang,
Shansi, in late February or early March of 1490. It's as
much history as Caesar's assassination is, no more, no
less. It's as "substantiated" as any history. There were
no Ming Dynasty tabloid news stories. History-writing
was politically sensitive and historians were occasionally
executed for falsity, particularly about "heavenly" events.


Sterling K. Webb
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From: <mail at mhmeteorites.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 3:18 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorite Deaths? Interesting old article-read


>A friend sent this link to me in regard to the Bear Creek meteorite.
> <http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Uk1ELzE4NjYvMDUvMTQjQXIwMDIwMA==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom>
>
> Near the end of the text it details the deaths of 3 monks and 2
> Swedish sailors by meteorite impact!
> Has anyone heard of this? The passage reads:
>
> "A few instances are on record of buildings being struck and set on
> fire and persons struck dead by the fall of aerolites. These Three
> monks were killed, one on the 4th September 1611, at Crema (?),
> another at Milan, in 1650, and a third in the same place in 1660. In
> 1674 two Swedish sailors on board ship were killed by the fall of
> one."
>
> Having never heard of this I searched the Catalog of Meteorites and
> came up blank. Has anyone heard of these falls and can they be
> substantiated?
>
> Matt Morgan
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Received on Tue 29 Dec 2009 12:55:56 AM PST