1912 – A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg explodes over Holbrook in “Navajo County, Arizona” causing thousands of pieces of debris to rain down on the town. The Holbrook stone arrived on Earth in spectacular fashion. The fall was heralded by a loud blast followed by smaller explosions and a protracted rumble which lasted roughly 2 minutes, in the early evening. Many fragments of the meteorite were recovered.
Birthdays
1864 – Fiammetta Wilson was a British astronomer. Between the years 1910 and 1920, Wilson observed about 10,000 meteors and accurately calculated the paths of 650 of them. In 1913, she made an independent recovery of Westphal’s Comet while it was passing the Earth. After publishing many papers, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 14 January 1916. She also became a member of both the Société astronomique de France and the Société d’astronomie d’Anvers. In July 1920 she was appointed to the Edward Pickering Fellowship, a one-year research position at Harvard College, but died the same month without knowing she had been appointed. (d. 21 July 1920)
1846-1919
1846 – Edward Pickering, pioneering American spectroscopist and Harvard College Obs. director from 1876 to 1919; this was the era of the introduction of photography in astronomy and the Harvard plate collection started during Pickering’s tenure is still a valuable archival source of data.