The Mbale strewn field
A shower over a busy town near Mount Elgon, in which a small fragment struck a boy after being slowed by banana leaves.
Key facts
- Fell
- 14 August 1992, in the afternoon
- Where
- Mbale, eastern Uganda
- Recovered
- well over 100 kilograms in hundreds of stones
- Field
- an elongated field several kilometres long through the town
- Type
- Ordinary chondrite, L5/6
The fall
A fireball and loud explosions were followed by stones falling on roofs, gardens, fields and the railway station of Mbale.
The ellipse
A survey by Ugandan and Dutch scientists, working with local people, mapped where stones landed across the town and countryside, giving an elongated field several kilometres long.
Where the big and small pieces landed
Fragments ranged from a few grams to a stone of more than 25 kilograms, and the survey used their positions to reconstruct how the meteoroid broke up. One small fragment fell through banana leaves and struck a boy without hurting him. Some people crushed stones believing they could cure illness; meteorites have no medicinal value.
The law
We know of no Ugandan law written for meteorites. The authorities and visiting scientists collected stones together with local people, and specimens went to Ugandan and foreign collections.
Related pages
Glossary: Strewn field, Strewn field map, Fusion crust, Meteorite ownership