Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-02-17
METEORS FROM THE SKY
Messengers From Starry Space Which
Fall to Earth.
They Have a Very Considerable Value,
but Ii Does Not Pay to
Counterfeit Them.

tific man to a reporter for The Star. This |
kind of fraud has been often tried, because |
such missiles from the heavens are worth a
good deal of money. Sometimes one weigh !
ing not more than a pound has fetched as
much as $1,000 its structure being peculiar.
Specimens ordinarily are not kept whole.
but are cut up into slices and disposed of
to collectors. A collector of minerals makes
it a matter of pride to have a piece of
every known kind of lneteorite in his cabi-
net. If new sort turns up and he has no
bit of 1t he is unhappy.
But nobody has ever succeeded in max
ing counterfeit that would impose on q
decently- Informed amateur, much less an
expert. The slices cut from meteortes are
sometimes prettily polished, or the cut sur
faces are etched with acid so to expose
the crystalline structure. This structure is in
no two such bodies precisely the same, and
the differences are considered well worth
studying. They are mostly composed of
iron, with a percentage of nickel and CO.
bait, and occasionally copper and tin. No
precious metals have ever been found in
meteorites, though, as have said. some of
them are worth many times their weight
in gold.
Not long ago a meteorite with small,
black diamonds was found in Arizona,
near the canon DiaDlO. L ne OlScONeTeTS
supposed that they had struck an iron
mine of immense value, but investigation
proved that the chunks of metal picked up
had been shot out of the realms OF space.
The place where they were obtained Is
known as the Crater because it looks like
one, being circular hollow 100 feet i'll
depth. three-quarters of a mile wide and
surrounded by wall OF rock SO soesp that
the bottom is strewn with the skeletons of
animals which have got in and have been
4 h4
ii is not of volcanic origin.
Biologists say that II was formed by the
impact of a single gigantic meteor, which,
at seine time IN the past struck the earth
and buried itself out of sight, leaving a
hole which has since become partly iIled
up, surrounded by wall of rock that was
forced out of place Imagine what big
| one it must have been to leave a cavity
| three-fourths of a mile wide where il Int
| this planet! The mass OF IRON OF which II
was composed is there yet, of course. Per-
haps, supposlng this theory true, II was
not sunk TOO deep to render mining for the
material Improbable 1t is worth consider
ing that the so-called 'craters' On the moon
are now said to have been formed by me-
teorS In the same fashion.
The Tenth Wonder.
The largest meteor ever actually seen to
| fall struck the earth in 1856, six miles east
| Of Lamar, Ark, on the north side Of the
| Arkansas river. 1t dropped within seventy
/ five yards of the house of one Christopher
{. Shandy. AT about ) O'Clock the af-
/ ternoon of March -, in that year. Mrs.
| Shandy was engaged IN some housewifeiy
occupation when she heard a tremendous
| report, which caused the dishes in the
china closet 10 rattle The report was
| louder than any thunder she mad ever
| heard. At first she thought it was caused
/ by a bombshell, and ran out of the house
in time To see the limbs fail from the top
of tall pine tree which stood about sew
enty-five yards from her dwelling.
| Mrs. Shandy had never come into close
contact with meteor before. Not liking
the looks OF it, nor understanding what it
was that had happened. she did not inves-
| tigate the matter unit! 4 O'Clock in The
evening. when her husband came home.
Then, accompanied by the hired man, ,hey
went out to investigate. They discovered
that a large hole had been made in the
ground by some falling object, and that
| the fresh earth had been thrown up to a
| height of thirty feet on the surrounding
trees. They dug down, and steam or ex-
halation rose.
The iron had buried itself in the ground
| to the depth of three feet. and the earth
around 1t to the thickness of one inch
! seemed TO be burned. The earth was still
| warm when the mass was taken out and
| the iron itself was as hot the men could
well handle. Mr.. Shandy at first supposed
! that their find was platinum: then he had
a notion that it was silver. and finally, on
| learning what II really was he sold il to
Mayor Caraway of the town of Eureka. 1t
was again sold to Col J. T. Betten, a
1t the Tenth Wonder of the World
charging twenty-five cents to look at it.
Heard Sevcnty-Ffve Miles.
"The noise made by this meteor when it
appeared in the sky was so loud as TO be
heard seventy-five miles away. According
to the testimony of observers. there was a
loud report, followed by kissing sound as
If hot metal had come in contact with wa
ter 1t caused general alarm, and teams of
-Gx-a will liSto
frightened. broke loose and ran away. In
Webb City, on the south side of the Ar
kansas river, a number of bells kept on sale
In a store are said to have been caused to
tinkle. A local newspaper said: Attention
was first attracted to the northwest by the
| report, after which there seemed to be an
immense and irregular body whiz toward
the zenith and somewhat north of II. and
there seemed to stop and whiz like 10. 600
scalding hogs, ard then. after another ter
rife report. to die away in the southwest
| 1T was contended by some observers that
the main body of the meteor did not fall,
but that the piece found was merely a
fragment that was broken off. The Nestor
of the little community of Southern Home
| Ark. settled the matter by stating en-
phatically that the phenomenon was a
! comic busted The mass dug up by Mr..
Shandy and his hired man weighed 1O7 IL
pounds. The fact that 1t only penetrated
to depth of three feet in the earth proves
that the ground where it struck must have
been very compact, and the force of the
was seen to fall in Agram, Croatia. in 1151
penetrated fifteen feet in a freshly-plowed
field. 1t broke in two fragments.
Twenty-Five Ton Meteor.
1.-The largest meteor known is now in the
Royal Museum of Stockholm. 1t weighs
80, 900 pounds, and was found on the west
coast of Greenland There is a meteor
from Mexico of LOO pounds weight I'm
the Smithsonian Institution. The fall of
such bodies to the earth is sometimes ac-
companied by a great display of light, oc-
casionally Illuminating an area of thous-
ands of square miles when such an event
occurs at night. The loud detonations
which are apt to characterize these pine
nomena are caused by the breaking up Of
the meteor. Meteorites. under such condi-
tions, are said to burst but as q matter
of fact, they are broken to pieces by strik-
ing the atmosphere Of the earth.
1T is reckoned that 100000 meteorites
enter the earth's atmosphere every twenty
four hours. Nearly all of them are burned
up before they can fall to the ground, only
a few very big ones actually reaching the
crust of the planet. Thus, the layer of air
which envelops the globe serves a pro-
lection for it's inhabitants, who would 9TH
erwise be pelted by such missiles to dan
gerous extent Astronomers think ii prob
able that some very large meteors have en-
tered our atmosphere and have passed out
into space again, their great momentum
At. N,lr