24 June:
- 1938 - A 450 metric ton meteorite strikes the earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
- # 1947 - Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
On June 24, 1938 a meteorite fell in the vicinity of Chicora. Named the "Chicora Meteor", the 450+ metric ton meteorite exploded approximately twelve miles above the earth surface. Only two fragments of the meteorite were found following initial investigations. They had masses 242g and 61g, and were discovered some miles short of the calculated point of impact of the main mass - which is yet to be found. Two more small fragments were found nearby in 1940.
Numerous reports of the Chicora Meteor mention that a cow was struck and injured by a falling stone, multiple accounts report the cow was in fact killed by the stone.
The Meteor was an olivine-hypersthene chondrite. Its remains were split between the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution.
The sound and light of the exploding meteor were initially mistaken for an explosion in the powder magazine at West Winfield, and was compared by investigators FW Preston, EP Henderson and James R Randolph as comparable to with the Halifax explosion of 1917 in destructive power. "If it had landed on Pittsburgh there would have been few survivors", they stated
June 24, 1947 UFO sighting
On June 24, 1947, Arnold was flying from Chehalis, Washington to Yakima, Washington in a CallAir A-2 on a business trip. He made a brief detour after learning of a $5000 reward for the discovery of a U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane that had crashed near Mt. Rainer. The skies were completely clear and there was a mild wind.
A few minutes before 3:00 p.m. at about 9,200 feet in altitude and near Mineral, Washington, he gave up his search and started heading eastward towards Yakima. He saw a bright flashing light, similar to sunlight reflecting from a mirror. Afraid he might be dangerously close to another aircraft, Arnold scanned the skies around him, but all he could see was a DC-4 to his left and back of him, about 15 miles away.
About 30 seconds after seeing the first flash of light, Arnold saw a series of bright flashes in the distance off to his left, or north of Mt. Rainier, which was then 20 to 25 miles away. He thought they might be reflections on his airplane's windows, but a few quick tests (rocking his airplane from side to side, removing his eyeglasses, later rolling down his side window) ruled this out.
They flew in a long chain, and Arnold for a moment considered they might be a flock of geese, but quickly ruled this out for a number of reasons, including the altitude, bright glint, and obviously very fast speed. He then thought they might be a new type of jet and started looking intently for a tail and was surprised that he couldn't find any.
They quickly approached Rainier and then passed in front, usually appearing dark in profile against the bright white snowfield covering Rainier, but occasionally still giving off bright light flashes as they flipped around erratically. Sometimes he said he could see them on edge, when they seemed so thin and flat they were practically invisible. According to Clark[4] Arnold said that one of the objects was rather crescent shaped, while the other eight objects were more circular, but initially Arnold's descriptions were only of the latter disk-like shape.
At one point Arnold said they flew behind a subpeak of Rainier and briefly disappeared. Knowing his position and the position of the (unspecified) subpeak, Arnold placed their distance as they flew past Rainier at about 23 miles.
Using a Zeus cowling fastener as a gauge to compare the nine objects to the distant DC-4, Arnold estimated their angular size as slightly smaller than the DC-4, about the width between the outer engines (about 60 feet). Arnold also said he realized that the objects would have to be quite large to see any details at that distance and later, after comparing notes with a United Airlines crew that had a similar sighting 10 days later (see below), placed the absolute size as larger than a DC-4 airliner (or greater than 100 feet in length). Army Air Force analysts would later estimate 140 to 280 feet, based on analysis of human visual acuity and other sighting details (such as estimated distance).
Arnold said the objects were grouped together, as Ted Bloecher[5] writes, "in a diagonally stepped-down, echelon formation, stretched out over a distance that he later calculated to be five miles". Though moving on a more or less level horizontal plane, Arnold said the objects weaved from side to side ("like the tail of a Chinese kite" as he later stated), darting through the valleys and around the smaller mountain peaks. They would occasionally flip or bank on their edges in unison as they turned or maneuvered causing almost blindingly bright or mirror-like flashes of light. The encounter gave him an "eerie feeling", but Arnold suspected he had seen test flights of a new U.S. military aircraft.
As the objects passed Mt Rainer, Arnold turned his plane southward on a more or less parallel course. It was at this point that he opened his side window and began observing the objects unobstructed by any glass that might have produced reflections. The objects did not disappear and continued to move very rapidly southward, continuously moving forward of his position. Curious about their speed, he began to time their rate of passage: he said they moved from Mt. Rainer to Mt. Adams where they faded from view, a distance of about 50 miles, in one minute and forty-two seconds, according to the clock on his instrument panel. When he later had time to do the calculation, the speed was over 1,700 miles per hour. This was about three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. Not knowing exactly the distance where the objects faded from view, Arnold conservatively and arbitrarily rounded this down to 1200 miles an hour, still faster than any known aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier. It was this supersonic speed in addition to the unusual saucer or disk description that seemed to capture people's attention.
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Abbiss: Summer without Water
Calliope: Fandango Hott Mama
Annika: Classica
Addison: Bare Essentials
Dice: Roll The
Fraiya: Blue Hawaii
Franpire: Psychodelic Summer
Jayney: CSI
Dorsal: My Love
Heroine: Rock of Love
Sassie: Classy
Kemper: Peep Hole
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
calliope:
he won lots of money..as usual, I didn't. 
audreyjean:
thats creeepy man ...