Uncovered: Chilling 19th Century Records Tell the Tale of Humanity’s Only Known Meteorite Fatality
“Due to the fact that these documents are from official government sources and written by the local authorities, even grand vizier himself as well, we do not have any suspicion on their reality,” the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
William John Gauthier/FlickrThe meteorite death happened in the territory of what is now Sulaymaniyah in present-day Iraq.
In addition to the meteorite victim’s death, records of the 1888 meteorite shower also mention another victim who — though they survived the event — was struck by the falling debris and became paralyzed. The Ottoman documents also recorded crop damage which was likely an effect from the shockwave.
Not only did the records provide a credible account of the meteorite death, they purportedly included hard evidence of it. One of the letters appeared to have originally been accompanied by a sample of the meteorite, but researchers could not find the rock sample in any of the Turkish archives or museums.
The archival documents were just recently discovered after they were digitized. They had been written in old Ottoman Turkish language which made the documents challenging to translate. There are still many documents that the team has yet to finish going through.
Researchers note that the lack of evidence of meteorite strike deaths throughout history could simply be due to a lack of study performed on such significant archives, particularly those that originate from non-English-speaking cultures.
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