Suspected Meteorite Kills Man in India

First recorded meteorite death in 200 years

A falling star crosses the night sky over Halle / Saale, eastern Germany, during the peak in activity of the annual Perseids meteor shower on August 13, 2015. The Perseids meteor shower occurs every year when the Earth passes through the cloud of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. (Hendrik Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

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• How to Find a Meteorite That’s Fallen to Earth

“There was a noise like a big explosion,” Baskar told the Wall Street Journal. “It was an abnormal sound that could be heard till at least 3 kilometers [about 2 miles] away,” he noted.

Baskar said there were tiny rock fragments at the site that were “blue-ish black” in color.

According to NASA, there is no record “in modern times of any person being killed by a meteorite.”

“An individual’s chance of being killed by a meteorite is small, but the risk increases with the size of the impacting comet or asteroid,” NASA adds on its website.