A Meteorite Burst Through Ann Hodges’ Roof in 1954 and Struck Her Mid-Nap — Leaving a Large Bruise and Making History
On a cold Monday afternoon, residents of Sylacauga, Alabama, heard three large explosions. The blasts sounded like they came from a high altitude, and although Sylacauga was in the center of the state, people as far as Atlanta, Georgia, and Greenville, Mississippi, said they heard them too, according to The Journal of the Meteoritical Society and the Institute of Meteoritics of the University of New Mexico.
Many people thought a plane had exploded. Witnesses reported seeing a black, mushroom-like cloud. Others said they saw a fireball shooting across the sky.
Locals knew something out of the ordinary had just happened. The ground quaked, windows rattled, and animals were spooked. An Air Force rescue squadron took to the sky to search for any missing aircraft.
Authorities soon realized the explosions weren’t from an aircraft. For the first time in recorded history, a meteorite had fallen from the sky — and hit a person.
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Ann Hodges and the Sylacauga Meteorite
Ann Hodges wasn’t feeling well on the afternoon of Nov. 30, 1954. Alabama was in a cold snap, and the weekend had seen snow. According to The Journal of the Meteoritical Society, after lunch, she was napping on the couch under two thick quilts when she heard an explosion.
Hodges immediately thought the explosion came from within — perhaps the gas heater exploded, or the chimney collapsed. She then realized a large, black rock was on her hip, and she was in pain. Hodges called the police. They took her to see a physician, and then took the rock to see a geologist.
Walter B. Jones holding the meteorite
(Image Courtesy of University of Alabama Museums Department of Museum Research & Collections)
George W. Swindel with the Geological Survey of Alabama wasn’t sure what he was looking at. The rock was black, weighed about 8.5 pounds, and was 7 inches wide. Swindel thought it looked like cement and sand mixed together, then burned in a fire.
Swindel dropped dilute hydrochloric acid on the rock, but there was no effervescence, just a strong odor of hydrogen sulfide. Using Kemp’s A Handbook of Rocks, he identified it as a stony meteorite. A day after the meteorite hit Hodges, a second and smaller meteorite was discovered on a nearby farm.
Do Meteorites Hit People?
The chances of a person being hit by a meteorite are so slim that NASA estimates it happens only once every couple of millennia.
“The meteorite has historical significance, because it is the only known meteorite to strike a person. As a result, there was a lot of media attention surrounding the event, and it continues to be an object and an event that attracts a great deal of interest,” John Abbott, an associate professor and chief curator and director of museum research and collections for the University of Alabama museums, told Discover.
Soon after being hit by the meteorite, news photographers asked Hodges to pose with the meteorite and the console-style radio it had first struck before arcing six feet in the air and landing on her.
Hodges’ landlord believed the meteorite might be valuable and attempted to claim ownership of it. However, Hodges’ husband retained a lawyer, and the two sides sparred over the space debris. In the end, the Hodges were awarded the meteorite.
Where Is the Sylacauga Meteorite?
Hodges in her home, with a police officer and investigator looking at the hole the meteorite left in the ceiling.
(Image Courtesy of University of Alabama Museums Department of Museum Research & Collections)
The falling meteorite gave Hodges a large bruise on her left hip, and since it seemed to bother her, she sought to be rid of it. She donated it to the University of Alabama Museum of Natural History in 1956.
“The meteorite is an ordinary chondrite, about 4.5 billion years old. That is certainly a neat object to have in our collections, but the real value is its historical significance in hitting Ann Hodges,” Abbott said to Discover.
Although other meteorites have crashed into Earth, Hodges remains the only person to have been hit by one. In 1984, a meteorite struck a mailbox in Claxton, Georgia, knocking it off its wooden post. And in 1992, a meteorite shower rained small space rocks on Mbale, a city in Uganda, but no one was reported injured.
NASA refers to these types of events as “kinetic damage,” and some scientists have suggested they occur more often than people realize. Mailboxes get knocked down, farm equipment rumbles over something hard, and few people recognize that the rock came from out of this world.
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Article Sources
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