History
The meteorite was discovered by the Nama people and used by them to make tools and weapons.
In 1836 the English captain J. E. Alexander collected samples of the meteorite in the vicinity of the Great Fish River and sent them to London. There John Herschel analyzed them and confirmed for the first time the extraterrestrial nature of the material.
Read more about this topic: Gibeon (meteorite)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—William James (1842–1910)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)