Ann Hodges
The Alabama woman who in 1954 became the first well-documented person injured by a meteorite.
Key facts
- Born
- 1920
- Died
- 1972
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Struck by a meteorite
Ann Elizabeth Hodges was resting on her sofa in a rented house in Oak Grove, near Sylacauga in Alabama, on the afternoon of 30 November 1954. Outside, people across the area saw a fireball and heard explosions. A moment later a black stone the size of a grapefruit smashed through her roof and ceiling, bounced off a large wooden radio, and struck her on the hip and hand.
The stone weighed about 4 kilograms. Hodges was left with a large, painful bruise along one side but no lasting injury. She is the first person known for certain to have been hurt by a meteorite, and the bruise was photographed for newspapers around the world.
What followed was less happy. Police and air force officers took the stone away for study, and then the owner of the house, Birdie Guy, claimed it as hers because it had fallen on her property. After a dispute, Hodges and her husband paid her to settle the claim. The couple hoped to sell the meteorite, but offers were small, and in 1956 they gave it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where it is still on display.
The fame and the dispute were a strain on her, and she died in 1972. The chance of any one person being hit by a meteorite is extremely small; only a handful of cases are known.
On the timeline
- 30 November 1954Sylacauga: a meteorite hits a person