Bourbon officer spots meteor
By Stacey Creasy
News-Mirror
BOURBON � While the vast majority of area residents were sound asleep, police officer William Martin witnessed a sight that will be burned in his memory forever.
For a few seconds, Martin watched a meteorite soar across the sky before it broke up. Pieces fell as far away as Park Forest, Ill., where it damaged some buildings. It was witnessed from Ohio to Wisconsin.
The National Weather Service estimates a 12-inch piece of the meteor shot through the roof of a home.
Another piece of the meteor fell and ripped through the roof of an Illinois fire station.
�It was before 1 a.m.,� Martin recalled. �I got out of the squad car and looked to the west. It was a large fireball with a tail to it. It lit up the entire sky for about three seconds.�
Police officers see a little bit of everything on the job, but Martin said he has never seen anything like last week�s meteorite as it blazed a trail toward the Illinois border.
�I was a little startled,� Martin added. �I�ve never seen anything like that in my life.�
Meteorites are very valuable. They sell for about $2 a gram, but some collectors, depending on the meteor, will pay more for a space rock than they will for silver or gold.
There are large meteorites, several feet long that have sold for millions of dollars. A teen-ager in Texas found what was left of a meteorite that landed near his home two years ago. The rock was about the size of an adult human fist. The teen sold it for $18,000.
Why? Because they are so rare. The majority of meteorites burn up before reaching Earth. Some of the meteors that do make it, go undetected or land somewhere like the middle of the ocean.
Martin said for a few moments he did not know what to think of the meteorite.
�With everything going on like the war, terrorism, I didn�t know what to think,� Martin said. �It did not take long to realize what it was.�
A number of people contacted The Pilot News and other media to report the �fireball in the sky.� Several people contacted the Marshall County Police to report the fireball, which was caused by the meteor exploding as it entered the atmosphere, according to the weather service.
Residents from Argos and Bourbon to Bass Lake reported it. Motorists along US 6 and US 30 also watched the meteorite sail across the sky.
Still, last week did not compare to an evening in 1893 when the famous Plymouth meteorite arrived. There were some people who actually thought the world was coming to an end as the meteorite, which was about the size of a small pickup truck, raced through the sky over Plymouth.
Some witnesses claim that fireball lit the entire sky for 10-15 seconds as it soared by, just hundreds of feet above the city.
The meteor broke up but one piece, a pear shaped meteor about four feet long, landed near Plymouth.
There is one company that is sure it landed on the Keyser farm, near Plymouth. If located, de-pending on its exact weight, the Plymouth meteorite could sell for $300,000 to $800,000.
The Ohio-based Meteorite Association, has cut a deal with the landowners to split the money 50-50 if the space rock is found. They have also agreed to break off a small piece of the meteorite and donate it to the Marshall County Museum.
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