Importance
The Sylacauga meteorite is the first documented extraterrestrial object to have injured a human being in the USA. The grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a frame house, bounced off a large wooden console radio, and hit Hodges while she napped on a couch. The 31-year-old woman was badly bruised on one side of her body but able to walk. The event received worldwide publicity.
The Sylacauga meteorite is not the only extraterrestrial object to have struck a human. A manuscript published at Tortona, Italy, in 1677 tells of a Milanese friar who was killed by a meteorite. In 1992 a very small fragment (3 g) of Mbale meteorite hit a young Ugandan boy, but it had been slowed down by a tree and did not cause any injury. In 2009 Gerrit Blank, a 14-year-old boy in Essen, Germany, claimed to have been hit by a meteorite, but it is unclear whether that was an actual meteorite strike.
Read more about this topic: Sylacauga (meteorite)
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