Only one person has ever been hit directly by a meteorite. Here's the strange story of Ann Hodges.

Business Insider

2 days ago

The Sylacauga meteorite, which is also called the Hodges meteorite, probably broke off the asteroid 1685 Toro.
1685 Toro, a mid-sized asteroid, has been classified by NASA JPL as a "Near Earth Asteroid" because of its orbit's proximity to Earth. Its size is similar to the island of Manhattan.
An asteroid is a rocky object in space that orbits the sun. When an asteroid or a piece of one enters the Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor. What remains after impact is a meteorite.
On the afternoon of November 30, 1954, locals in Sylacauga, Alabama, reported a bright streak in the sky.
At a time when both the threat of an atomic bomb and little green men in flying saucers invaded public fear, it was perhaps unsurprising that residents in the small Alabama town started calling 911. The Decatur Daily reported that many people thought they were witnessing a plane crash.
Ann Hodges, with her husband, rented a house in the Oak Grove community. Incredibly, across the street was the Comet Drive-In Theater, which had a neon sign depicting a comet falling through the sky, the Decatur Daily reported.
A part of the meteor crashed through the roof of Ann Hodges' home.
Hodges, who was 34 at the time, had been home with her mother on the afternoon of November 30. The meteorite crashed through the roof of Hodges' home at 2:46 p.m., Slate Magazine reported.
"Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her living room couch and she was under a blanket, which probably saved her life somewhat," Prondzinski said. "The meteorite came down through the roof in the living room and it ricocheted off a stand-up console radio that was in the room and landed on her hip."
Her mother, who was in another room, ran to her daughter's assistance when she heard her scream. In the aftermath, neither Hodges nor her mother knew what had happened.
"All she knew is that something had hit her," Prondzinski said. "They found the meteorite, this big rock, and they couldn't figure out how it had got there."
It weighed around 8.5 pounds.
Prondzinski said the meteorite is a chondrite or stony meteorite and composed of iron and nickel. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the meteorite is an estimated 4.5 billion years old.
When the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere, it broke apart. One fragment hit Hodges while another was located a few miles away. A farmer, Julius Kempis McKinney, discovered the second fragment while driving a mule-drawn wagon and later sold it for enough money to buy both a house and car, the Decatur Daily reported.
Neighbors and law enforcement rushed to Ann Hodges' home.
"Before you knew it, everyone in town was surrounding the house wanting to see what had happened," Prondzinski said.
"In those days they didn't have Facebook, but word still traveled quickly," she added.
A doctor and the police were called to the home. Prondzinski said it was Mayor Ed Howard and the police chief who discovered the hole in the ceiling where the meteorite had crashed through.
The Decatur Daily reported the impact of the meteorite left a large "grapefruit"-sized bruise on Hodges' hip.
"She had this incredible bruise on her hip," Prondzinski told Business Insider. "She was taken to the hospital, not because she was so severely injured that she needed to be hospitalized, but because she was very distraught by the whole incident. She was a very nervous person, and she didn't like all the notoriety or all the people around."
Hodges' husband, Eugene, arrived home from work to find his house surrounded by a crowd of people.
Hodges' radio may have saved her from being seriously injured.
"The fact that it came through the roof, that slowed its trajectory, and the fact that it did bounce off the radio — if she had been lying under the radio, it would have broken her leg or her back. It probably wouldn't have killed her, but it would have done a lot more damage to her," Prondzinski said.
The Air Force confiscated the meteorite so they could determine its origin.
"The Air Force looked at it because they thought it was a flying saucer and all this other wild and crazy stuff," Prondzinski said.
After it was confirmed a meteorite, the Hodgeses faced a lengthy litigation process to acquire ownership of it. Their landlord, Birdie Guy, believe the meteorite belonged to her because she owned the house.
"Suing is the only way she'll ever get it," Hodges told reporters at the time. "I think God intended it for me. After all, it hit me!"
The Decatur Daily News reported Guy wanted money to fix the house's roof. Litigation went on for a year, and Prondzinski said Guy settled the case for $500. The house eventually caught fire and was demolished to make way for a mobile home park.
Hodges became an overnight celebrity and was even featured on a game show.
"She became famous for 15 minutes. She had all these photo shoots. She was invited to go to New York City to be on Garry Moore's show '["I've Got a Secret"] where the panel had to guess what's her profession or what happened to her, why she is a notable figure," Prondzinski said.
Hodges would receive fan mail from churches, children, and educators asking about the meteorite, but she never answered any of them, leaving it to her lawyer.
"She was a very quiet person. She was a very private person," Prondzinski said. "She did not like having all the notoriety."
Hodges decided to donate the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
"By the time she had got the meteorite in her possession, she was so sick of the whole thing. She said, 'You can have it,'" Prondzinski said.
All Hodges asked in return was for the museum to reimburse her for her attorney fees.
Prondzinski said the meteorite created problems between Hodges and her husband, Eugene. Her husband wanted to make money off the meteorite but failed to secure a buyer. The two eventually divorced in 1964.
In 1972, aged 52, Hodges died of kidney failure in a nursing home.
Hodges is the first documented person to have been hit by a meteorite. Recently, a man in Georgia narrowly missed being hit by another.
"She's the only one who's ever been hit by a meteorite and lived to tell about it. Because of that, the meteorite has been appraised at over a million dollars," Prondzinski said.
In an interview with National Geographic, Florida State College astronomer Michael Reynolds said, "You have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time."
There have been some near misses in the years since Hodges was hit.
Most recently, on June 26, people in Southern states reported seeing a fireball fly across the sky, and pieces of a meteorite hit a house in McDonough, Georgia, with some piercing its roof, denting its flooring, and missing a resident inside. He likely heard what sounded like a gunshot.
"I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things," said Scott Harris, a researcher at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences' department of geology, the university reported. "One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment.
"There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments."
Harris studied the rocks and concluded the meteorite could have formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it older than the Earth. It is still being studied at the university.
Every day, Earth is hit with more than 100 tons of space dust and debris.
According to NASA, about once a year a car-sized asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere but burns up before it can touch down.
One expert told Live Science that while it's impossible to know for sure how many asteroids hit Earth each year, he estimated "about 6,100 meteorite falls per year over the entire Earth, and about 1,800 over the land."
Most of these go undetected, but occasionally they'll capture the public's attention, like Hodges' meteorite.
For instance, in 1992 a 26-pound meteorite landed on a red Chevy Malibu in New York, and in 2013, one exploded over Russia. There has also been evidence of a meteorite killing a man and injuring another in 1888. Meteor Crater, which is almost a mile wide, in Arizona shows the impact a large meteorite can have.
Prondzinski told Business Insider that in the years since Hodges was struck, her story remains popular, and people have contacted the museum about using the story in movies, plays, and even a graphic novel.