The Fifty-One-Pound Stone of Guernsey County

Transcription

On the first of May, eighteen sixty, Guernsey County, Ohio, witnessed a remarkable fall of stones, as recorded by Sir George Duncan Gibb in Odd Showers. At about twenty minutes before one in the afternoon, a thunderclap sounded. Then came a shock that felt like an earthquake. Many people saw stones falling, and more than thirty specimens were recovered. The strangest report concerns one stone weighing fifty-one pounds. It buried itself twenty inches into stiff soil. When it was found, it was so hot that it could scarcely be held comfortably. This is a historical report of what witnesses and collectors recorded, not proof of a modern event. Gibb understood meteorites as bodies moving through space, and he allowed that one body might break apart and produce a shower of stones. His interpretation belongs to his account. The reported fall, the witnesses, and the remarkable stone are the evidence he presented.