[meteorite-list] Wold Cottage 'meteorite homecoming'

From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: 22 Apr 2010 22:14:33 UT
Message-ID: <DIIE.00000070000048D8_at_paulinet.de>

Hello Martin G., Linton, and List,

> What a great story, Martin.

A truly great story!

> Kudos to Dave for his extraordinary generosity
> and to you for your noble effort.

I agree 100% !

> I was not familiar with Wold Cottage, but is on my acquisition list now.

Wold Cottage is hard to get :-(

Best wishes from the proud owner of a tiny 0.068-gram fragment. It is a very special
piece because it was a gift from Jake Delgaudio back in December 2000. The list gurus
will surely remember Jake!

Linton and List, here is some background info on Wold Cottage from U.B. Marvin:


MARVIN U.B. (1996) Chladni and the origins of modern meteorite research
(MAPS 31-5, 1996, 545-588):

Wold Cottage, England, December 1795, pp. 560-561:

At 3:30 on Sunday afternoon 1795 December 13, a 56 pound stone fell at Wold Cottage
in Yorkshire. The sky was overcast. Suddenly, several persons in the area were startled
by something whizzing through the air followed by a series of explosions. A laborer looked
up just in time to see a black stone emerge from the clouds and plunge into the soil about 30
feet from where he stood. The ground shook and mud and sod flew up all around him. Rushing
to the spot he found a large stone, warm and smoking and smelling of sulfur. It had penetrated
twelve inches of soil and six inches of the underlying limestone.

When Captain Edward Topham (1751-1820), the landowner and a flamboyant pamphleteer,
editor, and playwright, returned from a visit to London, he obtained sworn statements from
the three eyewitnesses and interviewed numerous persons who had heard sounds and felt
concussions. Topham arranged to exhibit the stone in Piccadilly, London, across the street
from the much-frequented Gloucester Coffee House (Pillinger and Pillinger, 1996).
He prepared a handbill with an engraving of the stone and a description of the fall to be given
to those who paid the entrance fee of one shilling.

There, Sir Joseph Banks saw the stone and acquired a sample, possibly from Captain Topham
himself. In 1797, Topham published the text of his handbill and the engraving of the stone
(Fig. 12) in Gentlemen's Magazine (Topham, 1797).

Two years later, he erected a brick monument over the site of fall and planted trees around it.
Today, with the trees long gone, the weathered inscription still tells us that on this spot, on
December 13, 1795, there fell from the atmosphere an extraordinary stone; 28 inches broad,
30 inches long, and weighing 56 pounds; the column in memory of it was erected by Edward
Topham, 1799.
Received on Thu 22 Apr 2010 06:14:33 PM PDT