Sorry to come up with the subject matter again, but I keep thinking about this every now and then and would like to add my two cents on it this time.
I agree with the "hammer fall" term being misleading, and so far haven't met anyone who is very fond of it except those who actually see it as a market opportunity. On the flip side I have met a few who were seriously confused by the term: The Sylacauga police chief for example, who sent me a link to an Ebay auction, thinking the speck pictured was a piece of the rock which hit Mrs. Hodges (it was instead part of the one found by Julius McKinney, which has an interesting story by itself and, as far as I'm concerned, deserves more attention than a footnote). I'm quite keen on the stories behind hammer stones and the idea that something ancient from out there is hitting something random and creates a connection between the sublime and the mundane. "Hammer fall" on the other hand is simply a sales term which does the opposite of creating historical awareness: It completely overshadows all the other aspects (historical or other) of a meteorite shower. I'd find it fairly irritating if anyone used the term "L'Aigle hammer fall", because one of the pieces (presumably) hit a man on the arm. A more recent example is Sutter's Mill - is it an important fall because one of the rocks struck a garage door? I feel these falls deserve different attributes in their headline, something which is perhaps attributable to all or most of the specimens of the fall, such as the historic significance, the classification, characteristics or man hours included in searching for the pieces in the strewn field. As mentioned before, I'm not referring to the actual stone which hit something, as the designation is significant in identifying the rock as being the single piece falling on something man made. Cheers, Regine ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
