In a message dated 11/19/2002 6:57:09 AM Mountain Standard Time, NJ-MEMORIES-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: > Here are some meteorite stories: > Out here there have been two meteorites discovered fairly recently around the prairie town of Ellicott, where our son lives. There was an article in our local paper a couple of days ago about folks heading out that way with metal detectors, hoping to find more of them. Probably the best-known meteorite is the one that smacked the earth near Winslow, AZ. It carried the impact of a five-megaton bomb and dug itself a hole about a mile across and around 1,000 feet deep in the desert (it's filled in now to about 600 feet deep). It's privately owned and was used for astronaut training back in the 1960s because of its possible resemblance to the surface of the moon. It's also open to the public as a tourist attraction. An old Reader's Digest book on natural phenomena that we have described the meteorite that did the damage as "huge: about as big as an ocean liner." The Vredefort Ring in South Africa isn't a hole; it's a dome. But according to the same Reader's Digest article, it's probably the site of the impact of a small asteroid. Scientists think it was large enough to shake the earth in its orbit. That hunk of metal originally dug itself a crater ten miles down and 26 miles across, which has since domed up following the release of all that pressure. At least that's what the theory was back in the 1960s, when that article was written. More may be known now. Incidentally, that meteorite that smashed through the roof of that car in Peekskill, NY, came in to celebrate my 52nd birthday. What can we do as an encore for my 65th? :-} Doris in Colorado (Up2Nutrix@aol.com) "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr