Nov 30, 1954: Meteorite strikes Alabama woman
52 years ago, on the morning of this day in 1954, the first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurs at Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounces off a radio, and strikes a woman on the hip.
Ed Howard, then Sylacauga mayor, Ann Hodges and then Sylacauga Police Chief W.D. Ashcraft pose with a meteorite underneath the point where it crashed through Hodges' house in 1954. Hodges donated the meteorite to UA's Alabama Museum of Natural History in 1956.
The victim, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. The space rock was a sulfide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Mrs. Hodges was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg.
A USAF team was helicoptered from Maxwell Air Force Base to Sylacauga later that afternoon and went to the Hodges’ home – which, ironically, was located near the Comet Drive-In – to examine the meteorite.
With the threat of atomic bombs and fears associated with Communism serving as a backdrop in the early 1950s, the Air Force was under orders to confiscate any items from space. So, the Air Force took the meteorite to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Quickly confirming the meteorite was not part of a spacecraft, the Air Force lost interest in the rock and it was later returned to the Hodges.
However, the Hodges’ landlord sued for possession of the grapefruit-sized rock, but the sides reached an out of court settlement, and the Hodges retained possession.
The 7 inch by 5 inch by 5 inch rock, displayed at the University of Alabama's Museum of Natural History underneath a glass case, is covered with a thin black coating from its heated entry. It contains several chips, and a patch of tar from the Hodges’ roof remains visible on one tip.
The only other thing that ever happened in Sylacauga to distinguish it is the fact it is Jim Nabors' hometown. "Gomer Pyle" was born and grew up there. He left to go to the University of Alabama after high school and never went back.
According to meteorite experts, the stone was likely a fragment from a meteorite that probably weighed more than 150 pounds when it entered the atmosphere. Meteorites smaller than 150 pounds generally do not survive passage through the earth’s atmosphere..
The UA Museum directors calls the meteorite the museum’s “most memorable” exhibit. “This is the main thing that people from outside the state come to the Museum to see,” he said.
Mrs Hodges' encounter with a meteorite in 1954 was such a big deal, nowadays, the State of Alabama put "The Stars Fell On Alabama" on their state car tags. FWIW, the state's tags used to prominently state "Heart of Dixie" by state law, but the AL state legislature's Black Caucus nixed that a few years ago because they believed it was racist...or something. Now, the plates feature "Heart of Dixie" in tiny letters just to the upper right of the last letter in "Alabama."
Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling meteorites, but the Sylacauga meteorite was the first modern record of this type of human injury. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by the Nakhla meteorite.
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