Chicora is a tiny borough in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Its claim to fame is that on this day in 1938, a meteorite fell. Witnesses spoke
of an enormous fireball trailing black smoke. When it exploded, the blast
shattered windows for miles. At first, people were afraid it was an accident at
the powder magazine in West Winfield, twelve miles away. The force was compared
to the Halifax explosion in 1917. As Chicora was a rural community, casualties
were low. Some contemporary newspapers reported a cow was struck and hurt, and
others say the cow was killed. The general consensus was if the event had
happened in nearby Pittsburgh, there would have been few survivors. The
meteorite is estimated at 450 tons, but only a few small pieces (a total of
about 10 ounces) were ever found. These have become part of the collections at the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and The Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, D.C.
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