ON METEORITES, OR CELESTIAL STONES 103
heaviest
being perhaps that at Bacubrit, Mexico, 13 feet in length with a width
of 6 feet and a thickness of 5 feet ; the weight of this mass is
estimated to be some 50 tons. Of meteorites which have fallen in more
or less close proximity to human beings, may be noted one at
Tourinnes-la-Grosse, which broke the street pavement ; another at
Angers, which fell into a garden, near to where a lady was standing;
and still another at Brunau, which passed through a cottage roof.64
Many
other accidents caused by meteorites or what were believed to be
meteorites are recorded, the credibility of some of the statements not
being very convincing; others, however, appear to be quite worthy of
credence. Thus the Chronicle of Ibn Alathir relates that several
persons were killed by a rain of stones that fell to the earth in
Africa in August, 1020 a.D.55 In the middle of the seventeenth century the tower of a prison building in Warsaw is said to have been destroyed by a meteorite.86
A hundred years or so before, on May 19, 1552, there was a great fall
of stones, not far from Eisleben, one of which killed the favorite
steed of Count Schwarzenburg, while another wounded the count's
body-physician, Dr. Mitthobius, in the foot. This was witnessed by
Spangenberg, who reports it in his Saxon Chronicle; he carried off
some of the stones with him to Eisleben.61 An eight-pound
stone (probably a siderite) is stated by a certain Olaf Erikson to have
fallen on shipboard and killed two persons, at some time about the
middle of the seventeenth century; this is rather indefinite
information.88 The most remarkable happening, however, is reported from
"Lazarus Fletcher, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. xviii, p. 263; article Meteorites.
"Chladni, op. cit., p. 8.
"Petri Borelli, "Hist, et observ. phys.-med.," 1676; cited by Chladni, op. cit., p. 20.
" Chladni, op. cit., p. 14; see also Gilbert's Annalen, voL rrix, p. 376.
"Chladni, op. cit., p. 19.
