SOME OF THIS STORY IS TRUE.
The meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of nearly 90,000 miles per hour and within seconds began to disintegrate. As it broke into fragments, most vaporized, but one of the larger, more cohesive chunks continued its trajectory toward the surface of the Earth, diminishing in size and velocity as atmospheric friction did its best to reduce it to nothing.
At 64,000 feet, just prior to “dark flight” when the meteor would reach terminal velocity and stop emitting light, it shattered mostly into dust with the exception of one pea-sized remnant. Unfortunately for Larry Blick of Beaverton, Oregon, this little leftover was a very stubborn composition of iron and nickel, with traces of cobalt and chromium. By the time it exploded through the roof of his car at 223 miles per hour, it still had enough inertial mass to amputate Larry’s left hand and blow apart the steering wheel before narrowly missing his leg and penetrating the ground beneath his car.
Larry was an instant celebrity, albeit a celebrity missing a hand.
Until then, the only other person1 in recorded history to have been struck by a meteorite was Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama. One cloudy 30th of November in 1954, at 46 minutes past noon as Ann was napping on her couch, an eight-and-a-half-pound meteorite crashed through the roof, bounced off a radio and struck her with enough force to leave a very bad bruise on the side of her body. Like Larry, she too became an instant celebrity.
In contrast to Ann’s life, however, Larry’s didn’t take a turn for the worse. The local TV news crews quickly swarmed the scene of his near-death experience at the intersection of Hall and Allen. They pointed their cameras at Larry’s demolished steering wheel and at the unimpressive meteorite crater in the street, which was “more like a little pothole” one reporter noted. They would have liked to have pointed their cameras at Larry, but he had been rushed to the hospital by a good Samaritan. Instead, reporters found a nearby pastry shop owner who, although she hadn’t actually seen the meteorite hit Larry’s car, had heard the incredibly loud noise it created. “It was like – BANG – followed by some horrible screaming,” the shop owner stated. “I was eating an eclair and almost bit my tongue off.” Despite her offer, the reporters declined to photograph the extent of her injury.
At first, Larry’s wife Simone was upset because he was supposed to stop at the grocery store and bring home fresh tomatoes for dinner. But after realizing that Larry was now a celebrity – and by default so was she – all was forgiven. The ragu could wait.
Ann’s husband Eugene, who wasn’t home at the time of the Sylacauga impact, probably felt the same thrilling emotions as he was carried along by the wave of publicity surrounding Ann’s history-making encounter with a meteorite (unlike Larry’s lethal little metal siderite, Ann’s grapefruit-sized chondrite was basically a rock). But fame has its price. For the Hodges, it was divorce within 10 years.
Eugene claimed that after being hit by the meteorite, Ann’s personality changed. While he was busy fighting to get his hands on the meteorite (the Air Force initially took it, then their landlord, Birdie Guy, laid claim to it) Ann suffered a nervous breakdown and began experiencing social phobias. Eugene finally acquired the meteorite from Birdie for $500, but publicity had cooled, and opportunity was no longer knocking. After using it as a doorstop for a while, the Hodges donated the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History where it is on exhibit to this day, not far from the large Basilosaurus cetoides skeleton hanging overhead. 2
Sadly, just 18 years after becoming the first person on Earth to have been hit by a meteorite, Ann died alone in a nursing facility from kidney failure.
Larry’s mental and physical health proved to be much more resilient as he basked in the limelight of his meteorite encounter. He and Simone made appearances on the local morning show, Good Morning America and even Live with Kelly and Ryan. The Blicks were contacted by a PR firm representing a robotics manufacturer, and Larry was soon fitted with the company’s very latest prototype bionic prosthetic hand.
For Larry, fame did have its rewards.
True, the Blick’s marriage also ended in divorce, but unlike Eugene’s insensitivity to Ann’s strange and traumatic experience, Simone was genuinely concerned about Larry’s well-being. It was Larry who left Simone.
Who could have imagined that 20 or so women with acrotomophilia,3 a condition where an individual is sexually attracted to amputees, would begin vying for Larry’s love and attention, flirting with him via his Facebook page “THE Meteorite Man”?
After a brief fling with an insatiable Beaverton city councilwoman, Larry finally succumbed to the adoration and highly arousing photos from Helen Winnrite, a divorcee and mother of two from – eerily enough – Oak Grove, a small town just one mile North of Sylacauga, Alabama. It seems that Oak Grove claims to be the actual location of Ann Hodges’ meteorite encounter,4 and to set the record straight, in 2010 erected a plaque at the site where the Hodge’s home once stood.
Was this just another one of life’s ineffable coincidences? 5 Sometimes late at night before falling asleep, Simone would ponder the strange butterfly effect that had so dramatically altered their lives. What would have happened if Larry had just stopped for tomatoes like he was supposed to?
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1 On October 15, 1972, a bright light accompanied by a loud noise was witnessed on the El Tinajero farm near Valera, Venezuela. The next day the owner of the farm, Dr. Arginiro Gonzales and his guest, Juan Delgado, discovered that a cow had been split in two by what is now called the Valera “cow killer” meteorite.
2 Basilosaurus cetoides is the official state fossil of Alabama. Most of what scientists know about Basilosaurus is based on fossils found in Alabama.
3 From the Greek akrotomos, cut off, sawed off (from akros, at the farthest end, extreme; see ACRO- + tomos, a cutting; see TOME) + PHILIA. Acrotomophilia is a paraphilia in which a person is sexually aroused by people whose body parts, typically arms or legs, have been amputated or by amputation sites in the body.
4 At the time, the Hodges home was located in an unincorporated area near Sylacauga, which later became Oak Grove. The home was destroyed by fire in 1998 and torn down.
5 The day after Ann Hodges was struck, Julius K. McKinney, a farmer who lived nearby, discovered a second fragment of the Sylacauga meteorite in the middle of a dirt road. McKinney was able to sell his rock to the Smithsonian for enough to purchase a small farm and a used car.