Paper: Daily Gleaner City: Kingston, Surrey, Jamaica Date: Tuesday, March 10, 1931 Page: 18
70-TON METEORITE OF NICKLE & IRON FOUND
SUPER-HARD METALLIC MASS FOUND IN TANGANYIKA
Mr. W. H. Nott, a Johannesburg land surveyor, states that he has discovered one of the largest meteorites ever found in Africa. The meteorite is a solid mass of nickel-iron nearly 14ft. long and about 4ft. in diameter. It lies in open country approximately halfway between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa, and is embedded in fairly hard earth for about 3ft.
Keeping the discovery secret, Mr. Nott went to the nearest village, Mbeya, one of the new stations for Imperial Airways. Here he secured a prospecting license and returned to the meteorite. He prepared a set of pegs and beacons, strictly according to mining laws of Tanganyika, and stakes off an area of 40 acres as a base-metal claim, with the meteorite in the exact centre. Trenches and other elementary workings were made, and the unique "strike" was legally looked upon as an outcrop of iron. The natives of the district regarded the meteorite as an "evil stone," because they had repeatedly tried to make assegais knives from it, but had found it impossible to cut.
To secure a sample of the meteorite Mr. Nott obtained a particularly good hacksaw and set his boys to work sawing off a tiny piece. Working relays, they took four hours to remove a piece hardly two inches across. Even this required the use of a sledge hammer and cutting from two sides.
Mr. Nott first estimated the weight of the meteorite as about 70 tons but other calculations make it 84 tons. Its constitution will be analyzed by the metallurgical department of the Wiwatersrand University. Nickel, iron and chromium are likely to be the principal ingredients - The Morning Post
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