Each year around 17,000 meteorites make it through Earth’s atmosphere to strike the surface of the planet.

With that many impacts, you’d think they would sometimes hit people. But it’s surprisingly rare.

The most damaging effects of such extraterrestrial objects are when large ones break apart in the atmosphere causing an airburst, as we discussed in a prior episode.

These can superheat Earth’s surface and in the distant past have incinerated entire villages.

In China, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, suspected airbursts broke into many tiny meteorites and reportedly killed hundreds of people.

But in modern times, we have very few recorded examples. And to be scientifically verifiable, the meteorite itself must be found.

We have documents from the late 1800’s when meteorites struck a village in Kurdistan, killing one man and paralyzing another. Supposedly one of the meteorites was sent to Istanbul, but it has not been recovered.

In the U.S., in the 1930’s, a meteorite pierced the roof of a car and embedded itself in the car seat. That one was collected but caused no injuries.

In the 1950’s, an eight-pound meteorite shot through a woman’s house, smashed her radio and bounced into her, bruising her hip.

She had to win a court battle to keep it, ultimately paying $500 for the privilege—that’s more than $6,000 today—plus her home repairs. A pretty big “impact” for a small rock.