A little helloween scare. BOO !!!

In early 1490, possibly on April 4, meteors appears to have burst in the atmosphere and claimed many lives in China. One account claims, "Stones fell like rain in the Ch'ing-yang district. The larger ones were 4 to 5 catties (around 1.5 kilograms), and the smaller ones were 2 to 3 catties (around 1 kg). Numerous stones rained in Ch'ing-yang. Their sizes were all different. The larger ones were like goose's eggs and the smaller ones were like water-chestnuts. More than 10,000 people were struck dead. All of the people in the city fled to other places."

The History of Ming claims that stones of various sizes fell from the sky. "[The larger ones were] as big as a goose egg, and the small ones were the size of the fruit of an aquatic plant". The date for this event, according to the History of Ming, was the third month of the lunar calendar. The date could be anywhere from March 21 to April 19, 1490 on the Gregorian calendar.

The last great Australian tsunami also occurred in approximately 1500 CE, according to radiocarbon dating. Are the two events related?


The object that produced the Quadrantid Meteor Shower remains a mystery. It is the only large meteor shower without a definitive parent body.

The first candidate was the Great Comet of 1491 (C/1491 B1). In 1979, Hasegawa suggested that the Quadrantids was the debris field left by a now-lost comet. This comet was first observed and recorded in late January of 1491 by Chinese, Korean and Japanese astronomers. It was first observed in Cygnus by Chinese astronomers, was in the middle of Pegasus on January 10, and Cetus by January 22 (Ho, 1962). Its been suggested that the Great Comet of 1491 was a Jupiter-Family Comet that was perturbed in the mid-17th century into a much longer orbit (Williams, I. P. & Wu, Z. D., 1993). Some astrophysicists suggest that C/1491 B1 lost its ability to shed material and is known today as asteroid 2003 EH1 (2009 Lee, Yang, Park). If the parent object of the Quadrantids proves to be 2003 EH1, it would make it only the second meteor shower known to have been caused by a comet that lost its ability to shed material and is now classified as asteroid. The Geminids are the only other meteor shower known to have an asteroid (3200 Phaethon) as its parent body.

According to astrophysicists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, C/1491 B1 may have come within 0.0094 AU of Earth. At roughly four times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, 0.0094 AU would make C/1491 B1 the closest approach of any known comet to Earth.

The second candidate as a parent body for the Quadrantid Meteor Shower is Comet Machholz (Babadzhanov and Obrubov, 1992). These two astrophysicists produced a meteor stream from Comet Machholz 7,500 years ago that could explain the Quadrantids and seven other meteor showers.


Sweet dreams all

a reply to: piney

Great historical events - thanks so much for sharing this. Quite interesting, I'm surprised this isn't more well heard of

a reply to: piney

Interesting stuff! Never, somehow, heard about this before. What a bizarre event!

Thanks for sharing.

I recall reading about an incident in Brazil a few years ago. Several men were struck dead by a small meteorite. It happens here and there every now and then.