A meteorite killed a man in Iraq in 1888, historic records suggest Scientists searching through Ottoman Empire records found letters from high-ranking officials that describe a large fireball followed by meteorites that struck a village.

On August 10, 1888, at around 8:30 p.m., a bright fireball lit up the skies above a mountain village in the Kurdistan Region near modern-day Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. The fireball carried a trail of “smoke” as it passed toward a neighboring village. Then, it exploded overhead, leveling crops and raining stones for 10 minutes on a “pyramid-shaped” hill below. The falling debris killed one man and paralyzed another.

A group of scientists, two in Turkey and one in the U.S., recently found this account in newly digitized archives of the Ottoman Empire. The caliphate, which ruled large parts of Europe, Asia and Africa between the 14th and 20th centuries, was known for keeping meticulous records. And the documents' recent digitization makes them more accessible than ever. The researchers published their findings April 22 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

Rediscovering an ancient accident

To uncover this dramatic death by meteorite, planetary scientist Ozan Unsalan of Ege University in Turkey says he and his colleagues had been continuously searching the new archives for a number of translated keywords like “meteorite,” “fireball,” “stones from the sky,” and more. Out of millions of documents, they got 10 hits. Three of those documents are letters about this event. The other papers cover several additional, yet-to-be-published tales of potential meteorite strikes. 

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