I allow myself to convey to you the story of an unusual phenomenon. At five in the morning, I was summoned from bed to witness, in the words of the person who woke me, “It’s raining fire.” To my surprise, I found this statement to be apparently true; Because when I looked out the window, I discovered the entire sky wonderfully illuminated by a series of shooting meteors (…) In size, these objects varied from the size of Venus (…) to a mere bright spot. They always left behind a trail of visible light for several seconds. “On the night of November 12 to 13, 1833, the skies of the Americas, from Canada to Jamaica, were filled with extremely fast points of light. Six days later, an article published in Huron reflectorThe Ohio newspaper reported what happened. The piece is titled “Noticeable phenomenon(“A Remarkable Phenomenon”), signed by “Messrs. Hapgood and Parker,” details the astonishment mixed with horror that gripped the population.
At that time, knowledge about the origin of meteorites was in its infancy, and ranged from pseudoscience to myth and false theories, such as the belief that meteorites are atmospheric manifestations. This remarkable event that occurred on the night of November 12 to 13, with its dirge of more than 100,000 meteors per hour, served as the starting point for what would develop as the astronomy of these celestial bodies. Humanity has long looked into the night sky and discovered periodic phenomena such as the appearance of the same periodic comets at intervals. Among them is Halley’s Comet, a model of a space object whose orbit and return time were determined in the 17th century. A discovery that is light years away from understanding the relationship between comets approaching Earth and events such as November 1833.
