Meteors have survived their passage through the Earth’s atmosphere numerous times throughout history. The recent meteorite that blasted over the populated town of Chelyabinsk in Russia—injuring 1,500 people, mostly from shattered windows caused by the shock waves—is not the first meteorite to strike a populated area on Earth.
A report from The Meteoritical Society in 1994, titled “Meteorite falls in China and some related human casualty events,” states that human causalities attributed to meteorite falls are extremely rare, but there have been reports throughout history.
Here is a list of other reported meteorites that have struck Earth’s populated areas in the past 400 years.
1. In the deserts or northern Sudan, 47 meteorites were found along the search path for asteroid 2008 TC3. R.A. Kowalski discovered the asteroid with a 1.5-m telescope at Mt. Lemmon in Arizona. The asteroid was 370,000 miles from Earth at the time he discovered it. Pilots and orbiting satellites saw a fireball.
2. In 2007, Peru had a mid-day visible fireball meteorite. Many fragments were recovered. Local people said they were ill after the fireball meteorite.
3. 1n 1992, a car in New York was hit by a meteorite. It passed through the car’s trunk and impacted the ground. A fireball was seen across the East Coast.
4. A meteorite in Georgia, U.S., hit a mailbox in 1984.
