First Known Meteorite To Hit Someone Sells In Christie's Online Auction

You’ve probably never considered what you would pay for a hunk of space rock, but on Wednesday bidders at Christie’s got the answer to that question. Space enthusiasts placed online bids on meteorites that have fallen to Earth over the years that price in the thousands. But there was one special meteorite that went for a pretty penny.

A piece of a meteorite that fell in Sylacauga, Alabama, in 1954 and hit a woman who was napping on her couch sold for $7,500 on Wednesday, Gizmodo reported. The 10.3 gram rock, called the Sylacauga Meteorite after where it landed, contains iron-nickel flakes and looks pretty much like a rock. But it’s famous for hitting, and severely bruising, Ann Hodges a 34-year-old enjoying an afternoon nap on her couch. The story goes that the meteorite blasted through the roof of Hodges’ apartment and bounced off of her radio set before hitting her, according to Christie’s. She sustained a nasty bruise but was otherwise physically OK after the hit.

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What Is A Meteorite?

A meteorite essentially is a space rock that has fallen to the surface of the Earth. Meteorites differ from meteoroids and meteors in that they make it all the way to Earth’s surface without burning up in the atmosphere. Meteors burn up in the atmosphere, you probably know them better as shooting stars.

The meteorite was small though, about the size of a softball when it hit Hodges, National Geographic reported. The portion that sold Wednesday was just a fraction of that size, measuring about ½ x ¼ x ⅛ inch. That’s about the size of a dime, if you saw it on a sidewalk you probably wouldn’t think twice about the famous meteorite.

After the meteorite hit Hodges she and her landlord were involved in a fairly well-known court case over who rightfully owned the rock. The landlord, a woman named Birdie Guy, argued in court that she had right to the meteorite because it had landed on her property. The two ended up settling out of court, Guy gave over the rock in exchange for $500 from Hodges and her husband Eugene. The full meteorite is now at the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

The meteorite was the first one known to ever hit a human being. In 2013, a meteorite fell in central Russia and injured about 1,000 people. Those who saw it said it looked like a fireball in the sky, the BBC reported.

Christie’s was selling a number of meteorites during the “Deep Impact: Martian, Lunar and Other Rare Meteorites” auction that ran for a week beginning May 3. The rare rocks are all from outer space and made their way to Earth through the atmosphere. The oldest was estimated to be 4.5 billion years.