If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What if there are 80,000,000 trees? On the morning of June 30, 1908, near the Tunguska River in Russia, there was a 12-megaton explosion. Roughly 80 million trees were flattened by what is assumed to be an exploding meteoroid. It’s classified as an impact event, although no impact crater was ever found. The meteoroid (or whatever it was) is thought to have disintegrated high above the earth’s surface. The area where all this happened is very remote, so there were no confirmed casualties. But Russians going about their day hundreds of miles away reported a bright flash of light, a blast of heat, and a sound like cannon fire. People were knocked to the ground and windows were shattered for miles. I suspect the Tunguska incident is why June 30 is called “Meteor Watch Day.” Because there are meteor showers in nearly every month EXCEPT June.
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