Sylacauga Woman Recorded As First Person Hit By Meteorite; What Are the Odds That It Will Happen to You?

As humans, it is typical that thoughts of being struck by lightning or in a plane crash could come into mind. It is the same with thinking of being hit by a meteorite as meteor showers regularly happen.

Meteorites can fall to Earth's surface without anyone ever noticing it because they could be a size of a grain or a small stone. So what are the chances that someone could get hit by a meteorite? So far, only one person has been recorded to have experienced it, which caused her some problems later on.

Getting Hit by a Meteorite

According to an article in Mirror, people sometimes mistook meteors for shooting stars as they appear in the night sky with streaks of light. Meteors are small rocks that enter the Earth's atmosphere and become a meteorite after surviving the trip and reaches the surface.

But they all start as asteroids. They are large rocks that orbit the Sun and floats around the Solar System. The biggest asteroid is called Ceres, which is about 584 miles (940 kilometers) wide. Some of the smaller ones only measured at over 3 miles (6 kilometers) wide.

These asteroids break down as they bump each other and form an asteroid, as small as a grain of sand or as wide as one mile (one kilometer), called meteoroids.

If they move so close to Earth, they could enter the atmosphere, burn up, and create a trail of light known as a meteor. It is estimated that the chances of meteorites hitting the ground is only 5%, and they could range from a size of a pebble to a fist. That is the same rate of someone getting hit by a meteorite.

Therefore, the chances of a meteorite causing life-threatening injuries instead of a hard bump are also extremely low. According to the data from Lottoland, the chances of getting hit by a meteorite is one in 840,000,000 when put into numbers. Although there has been one incident before, and so far, she is the only one yet ever recorded.

The Only Person Hit by Meteorite

In history, only one person is recorded to have ever been directly hit by a meteorite. According to Smithsonian Magazine, 34-year-old Ann Hodges was napping under her quilts on the couch in Sylacauga, Alabama, on November 30, 1954, when a nine-pound meteorite hit through her house's ceiling and bounced off a radio before hitting her thigh.

She was left with a big bruise from the meteorite, as seen in a photo in Time, which made her famous. But soon after, problems ensued, like her legal battle against her landlady, who claimed she rightfully owned the rock. Hodges also left her husband and died eventually of kidney failure at age 52.

On the other hand, her neighbor Julius Kempis found a chunk of the "Hodges meteorite" that enabled him to buy a house and a car after getting a lawyer to negotiate the sale of his find.

After 67 years, Ann Hodges remains the only person to have been directly hit by a meteorite that has been recorded. Although there are reports of a parked car and a house being hit by a meteorite in the past.

Check out more news and information on Meteors in Science Times.