L'Aigle, 1803
The fall that convinced science.
On the afternoon of 26 April 1803, a fireball crossed Normandy and exploded over the town of L'Aigle. Around 3,000 stones rained down over an area of several kilometres.
The French Academy of Sciences sent the young physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot to investigate. He interviewed witnesses, mapped where the stones had landed and showed they formed an oval-shaped scatter, the first strewn field ever described.
His report left no room for doubt, and from then on scientists accepted that rocks really do fall from the sky. The L'Aigle stones are L6 ordinary chondrites.
In the catalogue
- L'Aigle L6, France, 1803 · 37 kg