Ensisheim — The Witnessed Meteorite Fall of 1492

Released from London’s Natural History Museum, and the newest addition to our rock stars.

“In the year of Our Lord 1492, the Wednesday before the feast day of Saint-Martin, the seventh day of November, a strange miracle occurred. On that day, between the eleventh and the twelfth hour of noon, came a great thunder clap, then a long noise that was heard far around, then a stone fell from the air on the village of Ensisheim…”

Thus begins a 16th Century document describing one of the other newsworthy events of 1492. The record continues, “It was surely a sign from God, such as had never been seen before, or read or written about.”

Indeed, the Ensisheim fireball created a great deal of commotion. It fell five weeks after Columbus landed in the West Indies — at a time where it was not believed rocks could just fall out of the sky. A young boy saw it firsthand and brought residents to the black stone, to gawk at its perplexing fusion crust and the one-yard-deep hole it bore into the ground. People 100 miles away from the crash site in the Alps heard the fireball’s boom, unlike any thunderclap.

Twenty days later, Roman Emperor Maximilian I interpreted the Ensisheim event as a sign from God to declare war on France. Meanwhile, back in the walled town of Ensisheim, the mysterious stone had been carried to the church and tethered to a chain in a dungeon — ostensibly to prevent it from departing the same way it arrived. An old inscription attached to it indicates: “De hoc lapide multi multa, omnes aliquid, nema satis” (“Many have spoken of this stone, all said something, nobody has said enough.”)

The main mass can be seen in the same church today. This portion with a natural surface rim on two edges was deaccessioned by The Natural History Museum in London; it showcases Ensisheim’s characteristic blue-gray highly recrystallized matrix. During heating on its parent asteroid, chondrules completely melted and blended together; its original texture was vastly altered as indicated by the “6” in its L6 classification (The “L” imparts low metal.) The clasts seen illustrate the rock is a breccia, made up of broken rock fragments that resided in the near-surface environment of its parent asteroid.

Ensisheim is Europe’s largest as well as oldest witnessed fall and will forever be among the most historic meteorites known. In some history books and manuscripts, it was the only major world event mentioned for the year that it fell to Earth — 1492. Had this meteorite fallen in parts of Spain, the witness to the event may have been put to death as the notion that rocks could fall out of the sky at this time was considered heresy in some parts of the world. In fact, the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites did not gain wide acceptance until 300 years after the Ensisheim phenomenon.

Mashable wrote about this very specimen:
“Within a month or so of the meteorite’s fall, renowned poet Sebastian Brant wrote about the Ensisheim rock, describing it as a triangular stone that emerged from a storm cloud, burning on its way to the ground. At the time it was referred to as the thunderstone, and he alleged it was marked with a cross. The story, a form of early journalism, was published on one-sided bulletins and dispersed in surrounding cities. The verses, originally printed in Latin and German with woodblock engravings (below), were translated and pirated, causing word to spread of the mysterious stone, according to a paper written by the Smithsonian’s planetary geologist Ursula Marvin on the meteorite, published for its 500th anniversary in the journal Meteoritics. The poet Brant was also responsible for putting it in a political context: He claimed it was a bad omen for the French side. Maximilian was indeed victorious in battle. He gained territory and brought back his daughter, who was with the French King, Charles VIII. The fact that the event happened shortly after the advent of the printing press in the mid-1400s — and was used in wartime propaganda — was what made it memorable and unprecedented, Marvin said.

Over the years, many museums and galleries obtained pieces of the meteorite, with a large amount going to the Vatican, because it was the first institution to collect such objects thought to be sent from God. Some ended up in Paris, and some went to the precursor for the Natural History Museum of London.”

Is but a slice. 57 x 51 x 1mm (2.25 x 2 x 0.1 in.) and 9.23 grams