Everyone Thought It Landed Next to Them

On 18 May 1710 a meteor crossed the sky over Leeds: broad at one end, narrow at the other, and travelling broad end first. People called it the flaming sword. Its light arrived so suddenly and so brightly that those standing beneath it saw their own shadows thrown on the ground.

It was tracked onwards across Yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottingham and Derby. And here is the part worth keeping. Of all the people who watched it come down, scattered many miles apart from one another, every one of them was convinced it had fallen within a few yards of where they stood^[1].