FALL OF THE BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS, STONY METEORITE

Name: BLOOMINGTON

Place of fall: 301 Howard Street, Bloomington, McClean County, Illinois, U.S.A.

40^°28'48"N, 89^°00'l 5"W.

Date of fall: Between 2100 and 2200 on a summer night in 1938.

Class and type: Stone. Olivine-hypersthene chondrite, amphoterite (LL6).

Number of individual specimens: 2, which fit together to form a single stone before impact.

Total weight: 67.8 g

Circumstances of fall: While listening to a radio program on a summer night in 1938, Reverend Luther Cox and his family heard a noise on the back porch. The next morning he found a "rock" which had split into two pieces on impact. His young son, Henry, placed these pieces in his rock collection. In later years the now Reverend Henry Cox has exhibited them at numerous summer camps as possible meteorites. On November 16, 1973, he brought them to Dr. H. Nelson, director of the John Deere Planetarium, who identified them as genuine. On December 1, 1973, Dr. Edward Olsen of the Field Museum, Chicago, was given a small piece and prepared a polished section and subsequently conducted a microprobe and microscope study to determine the petrographic group.

Source: Letter of October 25, 1974, from Dr. Harry E. Nelson, Director of the John Deere Planetarium, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.