Beard Laws (00:00.195)
We did it. We're back. If it looks like I'm sweating profusely during this episode, there is a slight chance that that is true. What I really wanted to do is we're traveling to a new state. And if you're wondering which states we've already covered, go to your town dot com. Check out the interactive map. We're going to Alabama. Sweet home, Alabama. Roll it up, baby. Yeah, I shouldn't sing it. No, yeah, you can sing it. hey, home.

As long as we don't play it, we can put our own tape. Yeah. So I wanted to feel what it felt like in Alabama. And it's not like 95 in the studio. And I'm wearing this super comfortable, potentially happy, dead death row hoodie with this sweet Finley hat. But either way, we have an interesting one here. We were sitting here and I said, Meg, we got to we got to do an episode to pick a state. She was like, all right, Ohio. We already did it. Idaho. We already did it. Georgia.

We already did it and then she kept going and going and going the final she was like Alabama I was like, that's the one so we started doing some research on Alabama like some cool stuff. Not so much true crime. We wanted to mix it up a little bit and and I found That the person that killed Billy the kid Peter Garrett or something like that. He was from Alabama and I'm like, that's pretty cool And then I kept looking and I kept looking and I found this article

And it's weird. It's a weird one. It's extraordinary. There's some weird events out. You might even say was out of this world. What else is out of this world, Meg? Me. Besides you. Milwaukee pretzels. We love Milwaukee pretzels, don't we? I sure do. Nice, big, soft pretzels. Pretzel bites. Crunchy. Hot honey mustard. Yeah, the crunchy isn't bad. There's none on Milwaukee's website. So Milwaukee pretzels, home of the soft pretzel.

We love the pretzel. The pretzel bites are good. they're so good. Anyways, because we're super hungry at the time of the recording, we also love ourselves and Vermont flannels. We had a whole trip to Vermont planned for our wedding anniversary. Happy belated wedding anniversary. Thanks. You too. We made it a whole year. But we decided going to Vermont just wasn't in our budget. So check out the Patreon.

Beard Laws (02:25.955)
I'm just kidding. We don't have a patron But we were gonna go check out Vermont flannel see him in person Just not gonna work out, but we'll get there soon. We're only four hours from you Anyway, check them out from our flannel calm you code beard loss 24. You can thank me later You're saving decent amount of money And copper John's check them out copper John's beard that come you go beard loss. All right I'm super excited about this one and I'm sweating profusely. Do you think we should get into this? Let's do it. I think so. you're gonna have a southern draw on this episode Just like me aren't you?

Maybe. Sorry in advance for all the Southern draws that we don't have. Should we do the intro? So far from Southern. We are. Should we do the intro? Yeah. When? Now.

Beard Laws (03:22.755)
Hey, we're back. This is me. It's Matt. I didn't even introduce the beautiful Meg. I'm sorry, Meg. hey. Welcome back. It's me, Meg. She's over there. You can't see her, but I can. You're really missing out. How much money would it take in donations for you to start making a weekly appearance on the Yore Town podcast? A lot. What's a lot? I don't know. Throw it out there.

would have to work anymore. so let's say hypothetically 50 grand a year. When you'd be on camera. You heard it, you Yore Townians make it happen. So either way, we have a small town in Alabama. I can't say. So this is going to be, that's going to be an interesting episode. So I had to look it up and I'm going to share the screen. This is how you say the town. Silica.

And you can slow it down with a little bit of draw.

There we go. Silicaga. I think we can remember that potentially. So we're in Silicaga, Alabama, November 30th, 1954. Kicking it back a little bit farther than some of these last little episodes. Like I mentioned earlier, something truly out of this world happened. It's the story of Ann Hodges and the housewife whacking meteorite, also known as a big bruiser from the sky. Those are great headlines. Right. The fifties was pretty sweet. Let's set the scene.

quiet afternoon and where Meg? Silicaga. A town known for its marble quarries and its small town charm. Ann Hodges, a local resident, is taking a nap on her couch. But little does she know her life is about to change in a way that no one could have predicted. It was around 2 46 p a meteorite traveling at an incredible speed of approximately 200 kilometers, which is how many miles per hour Meg? 120

Beard Laws (05:16.227)
Roughly, we're not mathematicians. And it was estimated to be 4 .5 billion years old and weighing in at eight and a half pounds. Yikes. Yeah, that's like a bowling ball, but the size of a softball. It comes into the earth's atmosphere and most of the meteorites, meteorites, how do you say meteorites? Yeah, like hemorrhoids, but meteorites. Both.

Not a good time. Most of them disintegrate. Talking about meteorites before reaching the ground. But this one defied the odds. The softball size rock from space barreled through the sky, destined to make history. Nice. I like how you brought it up instead of… I know. I love it. As the meteorite approaches, it's glowing intense, intensely from the heat generated by its high speed entry into the atmosphere.

people. Listen to this Meg. It said it lit up the sky in parts of not only Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Isn't that wild? Yeah. The surrounding area, they saw the bright flash and they heard the loud bang. They actually thought a plane had crashed or potentially something like the mine, the marble mines or something had exploded. Hodge's neighbors reported obviously seeing the bright reddish light crossing the sky like a Roman candle trailing smoke.

Others said that they saw a fireball, like a gigantic welding arc. The entire meteorite is officially known as the what, Meg? For the place, obviously, where it landed, but it's popularly known as the Hodges meteorite. These people are super creative naming it, right? Sorry, I feel like I have to say it like that. I like it because I forgot how to say it. I wrote it down. I like it. But let's go back to Anne Hodges.

She's still peacefully just napping on her couch, oblivious to the fiery rock hurling toward her home. Suddenly the meteorite crashes through her ceiling, bounces off a radio and strikes her in the thigh. Imagine the shock of waking up to that. Bahá 'ís and her mother were both in the house at the time. Initially thought that the chimney collapsed or maybe a space heater had ruptured due to the dust filling the house. However,

Beard Laws (07:43.299)
Upon spotting the rock on the floor and the bruise on Ann's body, they called the police and the fire department. Emergency vehicles start to arrive and the word starts to spread that something extraordinary had happened at the Hodges house. Ann's husband Eugene was unaware of the extraterrestrial invasion until he returned home from work to find his home surrounded by a crowd. He said, we had a little excitement around here today. that's what Ann, sorry, told the Associated Press.

The excitement was so overwhelming that Ann was hospitalized the next day and said, I haven't even been able to sleep since I was hit. At the time, with Americans on edge about the threat of nuclear war and rumors about flying saucers and a lot of reports in Alabama, the Air Force took custody of the object to confirm that it was actually a meteorite. Officers at Maxwell Air Force Base assured that it would return to the Hodges household.

which coincidentally was across the street from a drive -in theater named what Meg? The Comet. And it featured a neon depiction of a comet soaring through space. That's pretty wild, right? Yeah. Obviously and remarkably, Ann does survive this event. She did sustain a severe bruise on her thigh, but she was otherwise okay. Ann's story quickly captured national and even international attention. She became the first and so far

only confirmed person in history to have been hit by a meteorite. Huh. Let's just pause and think about that for a moment. Every day, tons of space debris enter our atmosphere. Most of it burns up or falls harmlessly into the oceans and uninhibited areas. The chances of a meteorite actually hitting a person are astronomically low. Here we have Anne, good old Anne Hodges, struck by a space rock while napping on her couch in Wehrmacht.

Alabama apparently a larger meteorite split into two as it fell towards the ground one piece hit Hodges and the other landed a few miles away The second meteorite can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History It's probably good that it's split. right. yeah, and she gets to keep it Well, let's see the odds of a person. We're not giving the spoiler. There's a whole thing about who keeps it

Beard Laws (10:12.547)
coming up. So stay tuned. Well, they had said that they were going to return it to it. That's why I was questioning. That's a good question. And if you're thinking it, so are the listeners. But check this out. The odds of a person being hit by a meteorite are as low that it's almost unfathomable. It's estimated to be about a one in 1 .6 million odds lower than the odds of being struck by lightning or winning the lottery. And actually, there was a Michael, Michael or Michelle. Let's go with Michael Reynolds, a Florida State College astronomer.

National Geographic that you actually have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time. Her encounter, and how just that is, is truly a one -of -a -kind event because meteorites, they may not be rare, but getting hit is obviously rare because it's the only one that we have on record. But meteorites have been falling to Earth since its formation. They fall all over the Earth. It says Carrie Corrigan, a research geologist.

at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. November 10th, 2019, a bright meteorite estimated by NASA to be the size of a basketball straight through the sky near a gateway art in St. Louis, lighting up the Internet with reports of its brilliant flair. Most meteorites found by humans range in the size of a golf ball to a fist, losing about half their volume as they pass through the atmosphere, a significant portion of the extraterrestrial material.

lands in the ocean and much of it's extremely small. We get hit by dust all the time, Corrigan says too. It's kind of cool. Maybe that's why you have so many allergies. Maybe it's from the meteorites. So base allergies. Let's jump to your question. After the incident, the meteorite became the subject of a legal battle and in her husband, Eugene, they wanted to keep it obviously. But guess what, Meg? What their landlord, birdie guy claimed ownership since it landed on her property.

that they were renting from her. Sewing is the only way she'll ever get it, Ann Hodges remarked, adding, I think God intended it for me after all. It hit me. The case was eventually settled out of court with Birdie Guy receiving $500 in exchange for letting Ann Hodges keep the meteorite. When Eugene Hodges couldn't find a buyer for the meteorite, the family used it as a doorstop for a while. And then they donated it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

Beard Laws (12:35.011)
So it became a $500 doorstop. Yes. But listen. They didn't even keep. Right. Listen to this though. It gets wilder. We talked about how it broke. There was another resident of Wehrmacht. A farmer named Julius Kempis McKinney found a piece of the same meteorite a few miles away and is seen far removed from the coming space age. McKinney was driving a mule drawn wagon when his mules balked at a black rock in their path. He pushed the rock aside and returned home. That night.

After hearing about Ian Hodges experience, he retrieved the rock and brought it home, where his children then played with it. McKinney then asked his postal carrier to connect him with a lawyer to help sell the piece of the meteorite that he had found. Reports later indicated that McKinney made enough money from the sale to buy a house and a car. The meteorite piece was then donated to the National Museum of Natural History that we talked about earlier. Decades later, Christie's auction house sold another piece of the same meteorite in 2017 for $7 ,500.

which amounted to 728 per gram at a time when 24 karat gold was valued at just $39 .05 per gram. The meteorite, a piece of rock found by McKinney, proved to be worth much more than its weight in gold. 1992, a 26 pound meteorite slammed into a red Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York. 10 years later, the title to the car and a broken tail light sold for five.

$50 ,000 while fragments of the meteorite now sell for about a hundred and fifty dollars per gram. Huh? We gotta start finding some meteorites. Then I Listen to this somebody just go find some meteorites sell $50 ,000 a year worth of meteorites. We'll get mega on camera In the aftermath of the meteors meteorite strike Anne Hodges became a minor celebrity her photo appeared on the cover of Life magazine's December 13th 1954 edition with an article titled

a big bruiser from the sky. The excitement and national attention seemingly triggered ongoing health problems for her and unfortunately contributed to the collapse of her marriage in 1964. She then dies of kidney failure in a local nursing home at just 52 years old. And that's sad. She was in a nursing home that young? Yeah. Marriage failed. She ended up there and it was kind of reported that she had terrible health. Take, you know what I mean? Not at work.

Beard Laws (14:56.643)
taking a nap, sit with the mom. Just terrible, terrible thing. While Anne Hodges is the only human known to have been injured by a meteorite impact, there have been other notable incidents. 1972, a cow in Venezuela died after being struck by a meteorite. February 2013, a meteorite created a sonic boom over Shilobinsk, Russia. Breaking windows and scattering debris resulting in injuries to more than a thousand people. In 2016, an unconfirmed report.

from Natramapali, India, claimed a bus driver suffered fatal injuries from debris ejected by a meteorite impact. Despite various social media claims of meteorite strikes in the 21st century, none have been verified. Wild, right? Mm -hmm. Meteorites remain a hot topic of study. Gary Corrigan, who we mentioned earlier, a researcher involved in a project to gather meteorites from Antarctica, explains that the meteorite study is crucial to understand the early history

our solar system. 99 % of meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, she says. We think a lot of the material is really similar to the material from the Earth, from where Earth was formed. The what mag meteorite? Silicaga. Identified as a chondrite, contains more iron and nickel than any other types, and is estimated to be over 4 .5 billion years old. These rocks, which have never melted, are among the purest and most primitive remnants.

of the solar system's early development. Although the space age began 62 years ago, knowledge of meteorites date back to ancient times. At the 2000 year old Hopewell Mounds in Ohio, scientists have found human remains adorned with necklaces made of meteorites. Native Americans recognize the special nature of these rocks, which were transported from as far away as Kansas to Ohio. Meteorites have played a memorable role in Earth's history.

and Anne Hodges experience is well remembered. Author and humorist Fannie Fleigh reimaged, reimagined? Yeah, she redid the events surrounding the Hodges meteorite in her 1987 novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The chapter set in 1929 tells the story of a meteorite crashing through the roof of a home, striking a radio and nearly missing a person. However, the meteorite did not make an appearance in the 1991 film.

Beard Laws (17:23.171)
adaptation of the novel. There is some really cool pictures of this we'll share to our socials as long as we remember. So if you visit the museum, you can see the famous Housewife whacking me right and reflect on the incredible story behind it serves as a tangible reminder of just how unpredictable and astonishing our universe can be and how the story is a testament to the unpredictability of life in the cosmos.

could go for a Cosmo. Never had one, but now seems like the time we should go make one. It's a reminder that sometimes extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people. Her counter with the meteorite is not just a quirky footnote in history. It's a story of survival, resilience, and the sheer randomness of the universe. So shout out to smithsonianmag .com, only in your state .com. Wicca wicca wiccapedia.

And Meg, we got a quote, you wanna do it? Sure. Getting hit by a meteorite is like winning the Cosmic lottery. Except the prize is a giant bruise and a great story. The source is unknown. I saw that on the internet, but there was no source. But I had to share it. It's perfect. It was me. I'm just kidding. Well, you just said it, so now it's a quote by Meg. It's not me. All right. That's all we got. You got anything else? No. Man, I really do appreciate not only everybody listening.

But the fact that I can press end and take off this hoodie, because it's hotter than Alabama in here right now. So shout out to all the Alabamians that deal with this everyday roll tide, baby. Anything else? No. All right. Let's get out of here. OK. OK, bye. Bye.