Evening star., 1931-06-16
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

A dark-blue moon was moving across
the Northern sky. A trail Of blle light
behind it grew DINNER and faded away
In the June sunrise over the distant
hills.
"A reindeer l1erder witnessed this
strange phenomenon. A moment later
he was thrown from his feet by d vio-
lent explosion that shook the forest
about him.
Later that same day an observer at
the Weather Bureau In washington bent
curiously over O micro -barograph rec
ord. This instrument records disturb
ances in the atmosphere, somewhat as
seismosraph records disturbances IN
/ the earth.
Something funny" said the OBJ
server. The lines traced on the record
showed o minute disturbance, for which
he couldn't account. It had come from
the direction of the North Pole. He
made mental note and laid the record
aside.
Record Buried % Years.
For % years this record lay undis-
turbed in the files of the Weather Bu-
reau. within the past few days 1t has
been resurrected, carefully photographed
and laid away with great cafe. The OBJ
server had under his eye one of the
greatest news scoops" Of all time II he
had known how to interpret those MI
mute variations, amounting to about one
thirty-second of an inch in the baro-
ceived its greatest shock from outer
space. It came between and am.
June 80, 1908.
The reindeer herder, his brother re-
counted afterward, was so upset that
he never entirely recovered from the
shock. The earth had just been struck
by an enormous meteor. The impact
was in the depths Of Northern Eibe-
rian forest. so far away from ctviliza-
ton that no real explanation Of what
had happened was forthcoming for more
than IL years. The discovery of the
barograph record in washington con-
stitutes one Of the finai chapters in this
strange story.
The shock was so great that the waves
ID set up In the atmosphere came as far
as Washington directly over the North
Pole, distance of approximately $500
miles, and retaining sufficient force to
affect an instrument here Recently
barograph record Of the event was iden-
tified In England. This recalled to DR..
william J. Humphreys Of the Weather
Bureau the curious marks he had noted
years before. He went to the files and
found that the date corresponded to the
meteor collision.
Shock Long Remembered.
At the time the primitive folk of the
Siberian wilderness knew something out
Of the ordinary had happened. An
earth shock was felt In the City of
Irkutsk. Strange stories slowly trickled
out OF the wilderness of That weird blue
moon speeding athwart the June
morning. But the scene was so remote
that science paid no attention to the
tales. When they were beginning to get
interested the World War came along
and they had something else to do.
It was not until 1927 that the Soviet
government sent an expedition to find
out what had happened. The scientists
found an area OF desolation about go
kilometers square. Trees were blown
branches, as II by a curious freak cy-
clone. Here and there tiny patches Of
forest had been left untouched. The
whole area was q crater-like valley.
There were depressionS. covered over in
the years which had elapsed, which in
dicated that heavy bodies had pene-
trated the earth. The Russians found a
few witnesses still living Remains of
the meteorite itself were buried beyond
hope Of recovery. =
They were able to reconstruct par
tally the circumstances of the phenom-
ena. The blue moon had fallen from
the sky, preceded by an incandescent
gas cloud, driven with such force that
it had displaced the atmosphere close
to the earth through which it fell, set