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German Boy Hit by Meteorite Lives to Tell About It

by Caleb Johnson on June 15, 2009 at 08:30 AM

From time to time, kids have accidents on their way to school. Maybe they crash their bicycle and scrape their knee. Or, maybe they twist their ankle stepping off the sidewalk. Or, even worse, a car might hit them while they cross the street. Gerrit Blank, a 14-year-old German boy, has one of these stories, although it's a little less ordinary.

According to a report from the Telegraph, a meteorite entered Earth's atmosphere at 30,000 mph and struck Blank, who somehow walked away with only a three-inch cut on his hand (and a sweet new show-and-tell item).

Blank told the Telegraph that he saw a "huge ball of light," felt a pain in his hand, and heard "an enormous bang" that left his ears ringing like a pair of church bells. The meteorite's impact knocked the boy down and left a one-foot-wide crater in the ground. The Telegraph stated that the odds of surviving a blow from a meteorite are one in a million. If true, Blank basically won the lottery -- the prize being his life.

While this sounds like a tall tale, Ansgar Kortem, director of the Walter Hohmann Observatory in Germany, confirmed that the rock was a meteorite through chemical tests. Kortem told the Telegraph that meteorites enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, but most burn up before they reach the surface. Those that do make it that far, six times out of seven, land in water.

We're still not sure if we believe Blank's story. If it is true, he should count his lucky stars (or meteorites) that he's still alive. In 1954, a meteorite struck a woman in Alabama, and she lived to tell about it. That puts Blank in some exclusive company. And, with that 50-year gap, we aren't too worried about the sky falling on us anytime soon. [From: The Telegraph]

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Tags: bizarre, germany, kids, science, space, top, weird

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