A meteorite crashes into a parked car in Peekskill, New York - October 9th, 1992

On this day in 1992, a meteorite the size of a bowling ball crashed into a parked Chevy Malibu in a suburb of Peekskill, New York.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show for those interested in the big and small
moments of history. I'm Gabe Louzier, and in this episode,

(00:23):
we're talking about the day when a high schooler in
New York had her first car total by a shooting star.
The day was October nine. A meteorite the size of

(00:44):
a bowling ball crashed into a parked Chevy Malibu in
a suburb of Peak Skill, New York. Scientists later determined
that the meteorite was four point four billion years old
and had come from an asteroid belt in space that
lies between Jupiter and Mars. The car belonged to seventeen

(01:06):
year old Michelle Knapp, who was watching TV in her
parents living room when the meteorite made contact. Startled by
what she described as a three car crash, she ran
outside and discovered a large hole near the trunk of
her orange nineteen eighties Chevy Malibu. Upon further investigation, she

(01:29):
found a hole of the same size in the gravel
driveway beneath her car. In Laying in that hole was
what appeared to be an ordinary rock. Michelle called the
police to report that her car had been vandalized, apparently
thinking that someone had managed to throw a rock through
the rear end of her car and clean out the

(01:52):
other side. Her neighbor, who had heard the noise himself,
pointed out that a human couldn't have thrown a rock
with that kind of force, and that perhaps it had
fallen from outer space instead. This made sense, as the
twenty eight pound rock was quite heavy for its size,
plus it was warm to the touch and smelled like

(02:13):
sulfur or rotten eggs. The following day, a curator from
the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
paid Michelle a visit and confirmed her neighbor's theory. The
rock that had slammed into Michelle's car was a piece
of meteor that had streaked across the sky over the
East Coast. The intense heat and speed broke the meteor

(02:38):
into more than seventy pieces, and unfortunately, one of the
largest of those chunks happened to collide with the trunk
of her car. As unlucky as that was, it could
have been much worse. The space rock was moving at
a speed of a hundred and sixty four miles per hour,
and it just barely missed the cars. Gas tank meteorites

(03:02):
are relatively common. In fact, it's thought that about a
hundred pounds of this space debris strike the Earth every day,
but thankfully, a meteorite hitting a car is much less common.
As far as we know, it's only happened two other times,
once in Illinois during the nineteen thirties and again in St.

(03:24):
Louis during the nineteen fifties. But the Peak Skill meteorite,
as it came to be known, wasn't notable just because
it hit a car. The truly remarkable thing about it
was that it was one of the most witnessed meteorites
in history. In the span of just forty seconds, the
meteorite had crossed four state lines, traveling the distance of

(03:48):
over four hundred miles. Along the way, thousands of people
saw the greenish fireball streaked past overhead, including spectators at
weekly high school football matches throughout the East Coast. Dozens
of parents had brought video cameras to record their kids games,
and when the meteorite appeared in the sky, as many

(04:11):
as sixteen different observers from various locations turned their cameras Skyword.
The sixteen videos shot from different perspectives allowed scientists to
map the exact trajectory of the meteorite, making it one
of just a few whose orbit is definitively known. But

(04:32):
as interesting as that is, if you're like me, what
you really want to know is whether Michelle Knapp's insurance
paid for the damage. The answer is no, but don't
feel too bad for Michelle. Although she had only paid
about three hundred dollars for her first car, the unique
damage made it worth ten thousand dollars to a meteorite

(04:55):
enthusiast in Cranford, New Jersey. But the true payday aime
when Michelle sold the meteorite itself to a group of
collectors for sixty nine thousand dollars. With that, she could
afford a whole fleet of used Chevy Malibus or at
least a couple of new ones. Eventually, the meteorite was

(05:16):
broken into smaller pieces and divvied up between other collectors
and a few museums, including Chicago's Field Museum, the American
National History Museum, and the Smithsonian. As for the car,
it's available to rent and has been displayed around the
world in cities like Paris, Munich, and Tokyo. If you

(05:38):
decide to exhibit the car yourself, make sure you're extra
careful with it. According to its own website, Meteorite car
dot com, Michelle knaps Old Chevy Malibu is now ensured
for a million dollars. Kind of makes you wish your
own car could be struck by a meteorite. Well, all

(05:59):
of I'm Gabe Louizier, and hopefully you now know a
little more about history today than you did yesterday. If
you have a second and you're so inclined, consider leaving
us a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow
the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d
i HC Show, and if you have any feedback for us,

(06:23):
you can send it to This Day at I heart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class. For more

(06:44):
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.