Have you ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
It could be anything, really. A fender bender. Or stubbing your toe. Missing the bus.
Whatever it may be, we all would rather do without the “wrong place at the wrong time” scenarios.
This was definitely the case for Elizabeth Hodges on this date, November 30, 1954. I’m sure Elizabeth was a perfectly nice woman, living her good life in Sylacauga, Alabama. She probably did some housework that morning and plopped down on the couch for a rest. She fell asleep in no time at all.
And then it happened. From deep in outer space, a meteorite came hurling through the Universe and crashed through the roof of her house, right into the living room. It bounced off her radio and struck her squarely on the hip.
It was the first episode of a meteorite striking a human being in modern times. The hefty rock from outer space was a sulfide meteorite. It weighed 8.5 pounds and was seven inches long.
Thankfully, Elizabeth wasn’t hurt seriously. She only incurred some terrible bruising along her hip and leg.
There are some recorded incidents of people being injured or killed by meteorites in ancient Chinese. But the misfortune of Elizabeth Hodges was the first modern account of this type of accident. And then there is this. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by one of those galaxy rocks.
A few notes about meteorites, just to set things straight. There are things called space rocks. They orbit the Sun. Space rocks that are less than 39 inches in diameter are called meteoroids. Those that are bigger are classified as asteroids.
Then, when these objects enter our good Earth’s atmosphere, they give off bright streaks of light in the sky. And these are called meteors. We call them “shooting stars” or “falling stars.” But they aren’t stars at all.
Most of the time, these chunks of rock burn up in the atmosphere. But occasionally, some make it all the way down to the Earth. When meteoroids reach the ground, we call them meteorites.
So. There it is. On this date in 1954, one of them hit dear Elizabeth. Right on her hip.
Just like Chicken Little, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet. In Elizabeth’s case? The sky really was falling.
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“Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective
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“Great and small suffer the same mishaps.”
— Blaise Pascal
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“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
― L.M. Montgomery
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The rock. That drops. Wrong place, maybe.
