|
First I would like to thank Dave Hostetter for
sharing the first article that helped me find this. A little more on
this non-meteorite, including the Indianapolis Journal article that was referred
to in Dave's article. All from a different paper but the paper does credit
the Journal for the first article as noted. Thanks, Mark
Paper: Fort Wayne Weekly, Location: Fort Wayne, IN, Date: Wednesday, January 29th, 1879, Page: Could not tell, perhaps the last page? THE METEORITE Leoidas Grover of Fountain County, Instantly Killed While Asleep by the Fall of a Twenty-pound Meteor (Indianapolis Journal). Covington, Jan. 15. - On Tuesday night last, Leonidas Grover, who resided in the vicinity of Newtown, Fountain county, met his death in a way that is probably without parallel in this or any other country. Mr. Grover was a widower, living on his farm with a married daughter and her husband. On the evening referred to, the married couple had been on a visit to some neighbors, and upon returning at a late hour entered the house, find everything, in all appearence, in usual order, and supposing that Mr. Grover had already retired, went to bed themselves. Next morning the daughter arose, and having prepared breakfest, went to the adjoining room to call her father, and was horrified to find him lying upon his shattered bed, a mutilated corpse. Her screams brought the husband quickly to the bedroom, and an inspection disclosed a ragged opening in the roof, directly over the breast of the unfortunate man, which was torn through as if by a cannon shot, and extending downward through the bedding and floor; other holes showed the direction taken by the deadly missle. Subsequent search revealed the fact that the awful calamity was caused by the fall of a meteoric stone, and the stone itself, pyramidal in shape and weighing twenty pounds and a few ounces, avoirdupois, and stained with blood, was unearthed from a depth of nearly five feet, thus showing the fearful impetus with which it struck the building. The position of the corpse, showed the victim was asleep when stricken, and that death, to him was painless. (Mark note: Same paper, same page) The State Geologist Explains - There Aint no Sich a Person as "Leonidas Glover, Widower." (Indianapolis News.) An air of melancholy sadness, mixed with large quantities of silence, pervades the bureau of the state geologist. A News reporter visited him this morning. Contrary to his usual custom Prof. Cox talked slowly and with much difficulty. He had been deceived twice before on meteoric stones, by mendacious hoaxers, but the Fountain county stone has struck him as being fully twenty-four carat fine in honesty. So fully convinced of the intergrity of this heavenly bowlder was he, that he wrote an account of meteors and left a large hole in the article to insert the meteorite when Maj. J.J. Palmer, who had been sent for it, should return with the trophey. "It would have been a big thing," said the state geologist, "and Prof. J. Lawrence Smith would have given $500 for it." The major could find no one in the county, who knew "Leonida Glover, widower." There was no demolished roof, no desolated household, no hole in the ground where the magnetic stone "lit." There was nothing. All was a sham, a delusion, a vanity. The major brought back a fourteen-pound bewider blackened with ink and burned to look igneous and grimy. He intended it as a joke; but it didn't raise a smile upon the state geologist's countenance. He was as sad as King Henry, when he heard that "the bark that held the prince went down." He livened up a little before the reporter departed, and told of a meteoric stone that fell in 1846; in South Carolina, within twenty miles of Columbia. The event took place during a terrific thunder storm, and the aerolite was seen to fall by an aged negro, who picked it up and ran to the house with it, saying: "Gorramity, missus! here's a chunk of solid thunder!" (Mark note: Same paper, same page) AEROLITES Something About Them - What They Are and Where They Come From - Mention of Serveral of the Largest of These Strange Visitors - Collectors of Meteoric Stones (Indianapolis News) State Geologist Cox has dispatched Maj. J.J. Palmer to Foutain county to procure for the state museum the meteoric stone reported as having fallen near Newton last Tuesday night, killing Leonidas Glover, a farmer, while asleep in his bed, coming through the roof of his house and going through the his body, the bedding and floor, and penetrating the earth beneath to a depth of five feet. The stone is said to be of twenty pounds weight and pyramidal in shape. Prof. Cox does not entirely credit the story but cannot believe that any one would invent a hoax of this charactor. The direction from the general rule of their descent, as they usually fall at an angle and seldom imbed tehmselves in any great depth in the earth's surface. They have been known to fall on ice and not break through the congealed surface. The professors day this occurrrence will turn the attention of hundreds who are studying phenomena of this character to Indiana, and that if J. Lawrence Smith, of Louisville, who is making aerolites a special study and who is now in Europe, were at home, he would straddle a streak of lightning for Fountain county instanter. Prof. G. C. Broadhead, of Missouri, who has recently written a pamphlet on meteoric stones and shooting stars, says of them that they are likely to fall at any time, but have certain periods at which they appear in great numbers. Every year about the 10th of August a shower of meteors is seen that appears to proceed from the constellation of Perseus. Another period is, at the 12th and 13th days of November, after thirty-three years, and for three years thereafter, at which time they apparently come from the constellation Leo. The next appearence of the November shower will be in the year 1900. Some of these aerolites are gaseous and transparent, others solid as the bolides. Adams has demonstrated that the zone of cosmical bodies forming the meteor system has an orbit extending out into space beyond the orbit of Uranus; it is the opinion of some astronomers that we ower to Uranus the attraction of these star showers. Meteors, according to Prof. Broadhead, appear between 46 and 92 miles elevation; their speed varying from 14 to 107 miles per secon. A majority of the November meteors of 1868 appeared of an orange color, a very few blue. In 1866 the portion of the stream of November meteors through which the earth rolled was 80,000 miles deep. In 1867, the part of the stream traversed was, moreover, 50,000 miles down. Prof. H.A. Newton estimates the thickness of the August ring at from five to ten millions of miles for the earth, moving at the rare of two millions of miles per day, is immersed in it for several days. He estimates more that 300,000,000,000,000 for the total number of these bodies in the August ring. It has been assumed by astronomers that seven and one-half millions of meteors pass the earth's atmosphere, and bright enough to be seen by the naked eye every twenty-four hours. If revealed by the telescope they would number 400,000,000. Pyroxene, olivine, chrome iron, angite, etc., are found as constituents of bolides or meteoricstones. Their form being irregular is a proof that at some time they have formed part of a larger mass. Metallic iron mixed with more or less nickel and cobalt and other metals peculair to the earth are of constant occurence in these celestial stones. They stony portions of these visitors resemble the older igneous rocks, and very closely those of some volcanoes. Dr. J. Lawerence Smith is of opion that eustatite, bronzite and chrysolite from ninety percent of the earthly minerals in the aggregate mass of all meteoric stones. Schreibersite and troillite, two minerals not found in the earth, are found in meteorites. As to the size of meteorites the Bates county, Missouri, iron meteorite was a little over eighty-five pounds, the Tazewell, East Tennessee, iron meteorite was fifty-five pounds. The Smithsonian Institiution has a meteoric stone from Coahuila, Mexico, that weighs 252 pounds, Tucson, Arizona, one of iron, 1,400 pounds. A mass of meteoric iron in Chihuahua weighs about 3,853 pounds. The largest known mass of meteoric iron is in the mountains east of Port Oxford, Oregon, described by Dr. John Evans, and weghing several tons. The Gibbs meteorite, in Yale college museum, weighs 1,635 pounds. The largest collections of meteorites in the United States are those of J. Lawrence Smith, who has 171 and C. U. Shepherd, of Amherst College, who has 286. A number of meteorites fell in Harrison county, this state, in 1857, during a meteoric shower. Another fell at Rochester, this state, in December, 1876, which weighed nearly two pounds. It is asserted that the crust of the earth is increasing at the rare of one foot per 100 years by the accession of meteorites. |
