Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — FAMOUS METEORIC STONES. [ARTICLE]

FAMOUS METEORIC STONES.

The Largest Known Weighs 50,000 Pouuds. A meteoric stone, which is described by Pliny as being as large as a wagon, fell near Aegospotami, in Asia Minor, in 467 B. C. About A. D. 1500, a stone weighing 1,400 pound, fell in Mexico, and is now in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. The largest meteoric masses on record were heard of first by Captain Ross, the Arctic explorer, through some Esquimaux. These lay on the west coast of Greenland, and were subsequently found by the Swedish exploring party of 1870. One of them, now in the Royal Museum of Stockholm, weighs over 50,000 pounds and is the largest specimen known. Two remarkable meteorites have fallen in lowa within the past twenty years. February 12, 1875, an exceedingly brilliant meteor, in the form of an elongated horse-shoe, was seen throughout a region of at least 400 miles in length and 250 in breadth, lying in Missouri and lowa. It is described as “without a tail, but having a flowing jacket of flame. Detonations were heard so violent as to shake the earth and to jar the windows like the shock of an earthquake,” as it fell about 10:30 p.m., a few miles east of Marengo, lowa. The ground for the space of seven miles in length by two to four miles in breadth was strewn with, fragments of this meteor varying in weight from a few ounces to seventy-four pounds. On May 10, 1870, a large and extraordinary luminous meteor exploded with terrific noise, followed at slight intervals with less violent detonations, aud struck the earth in the edge of a ravine near Estherville, Emmet County, lowa, penetrating to a depth of fourteen feet. Within two miles other fragments were found, one of which weighed 170 pounds and another 32 pounds. The principal mass weighed 431 pounds. All the discovered parts aggregated about 640 pounds. The one of 170 pounds is now in the cabinet of the State University of Minnesota. The composition of this aerolite is peculiar in many respects, but as in nearly all aerolites there is a considerable proportion of iron and nickel. It is generally held that meteors at one time or another formed integral parts of a comet. The meteor enters the earth’s atmosphere from without with a velocity relative to the earth that is comparable with the earth’s velocity in its orbit, which is nineteen miles per second. By the resistance it meets in penetrating the air the light and jhe other phenomena of the luminous ‘fraia are produced. Many small meteorites are undoubtedly consumed by this friction, before they reach the earth’s surface.