[meteorite-list] Wold Cottage 'meteorite homecoming'

From: matt <metlist_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:29:03 +0100
Message-ID: <4BD1D8DF.2070809_at_plu.to>

Martin was kind enough to send me a couple of images of the presentation, I've
put them up on the British and Irish Meteorite Society site at:

http://www.bimsociety.org/article-wold.shtml

Matt.

bernd.pauli at paulinet.de wrote:
> 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.
>
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Received on Fri 23 Apr 2010 01:29:03 PM PDT