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- The story has been told in every language and in every
single possible context from simple history to science-fiction: how in
the summer of 1908 a strange object -- sometimes meteorite, sometimes a
cometary fragment, sometimes an alien spaceship -- crashed into, or vaporized
over, a remote area in the Siberian wilderness known as Tunguska. Haunting
photos of the event's aftereffects are burned into our consciousness and
have even graced the covers of rock and roll albums: thousands of trees
pointing away from the disaster like so many carefully laid out matchsticks.
Stories of the still-unexplained Siberian devastation are equally gripping,
and when the first Soviet expeditions made their way to the area decades
later, they were startled to find that the local Tungus tribespeople had
attributed the event to a surprise visit by the fire-god Adgy.
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- However, any small comfort offered by both time and
distance vanishes when we examine the more immediate crashes on our own
continent.
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- South America: A Cosmic Dart Board
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- On August 13, 1930 a strange explosion very similar
to the one at Tunguska took place at Rio Curaca on a jungle riverbank on
the border between Perú and Brazil. Word of the event was brought
back to civilization by Catholic missionaries doing the Lord's work in
Amazonia and printed in the Vatican's own L'Osservatore Romano. According
to the eyewitnesses, their attention was drawn to the phenomenon by a high-pitched
whistling sound in the early morning hours. The sun acquired a blood-red
cast that frightened the natives and made the missionaries wonder if the
time of reckoning might be at hand.The article in L'Osservatore Romano
makes reference to the highly unusual fact that a rain of fine ash "left
a white layer on the jungle leaves" prior to the impact.
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- Five years later, a second devastating explosion would
occur in South America's northern reaches, specifically at Rupununi in
British Guyana. According to an article featured in The Sky magazine in
September 1939, the Guyanan incident occurred under cover of darkness in
the month of December 1935. Researcher Serge Korff had visited the remote
area only a few months after the event and noted that the area affected
by the cosmic one-shot could have been much wider than the one in Tunguska
decades earlier: he managed to interview a local miner who had gone to
bed early on that fateful evening and was brusquely wakened by the explosion
and the sound of his crockery being thrown about in the kitchen. The miner
claimed to have visited the impact area and guessed that it roughly measured
one hundred twenty square kilometers. Giant rainforest trees had fallen
down pointing away from the impact "as if they'd been pushed."
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- It was not until 1937 that William Holden, a researcher
with the American Museum of Natural History, was able to visit the area
and climb to the top of a local mountain range: he reported being able
to see a devastated area measuring several miles in diameter whose trees
had been sheared off some 20 feet from their bases. Holden also supported
the belief that some sort of cosmic impact had been responsible for the
event. Subsequent researchers found that the area had been covered over
by the exuberant rainforest in a matter of years.
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- Researchers agreed that common factors in the Brazilian
and Guyanan cases were the ear-splitting sound produced by the object and
the fact that both events occurred during annual meteor showers --the Perseids
and Geminids--in their respective years and are identifiable with the penetration
of Earth's atmosphere by a small meteor. But even so, there was the niggling
suspicion, as with the Tunguska event, that something more than stray cosmic
junk may have been involved.
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- A Second Round of Events
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- The South American landmass appears to have avoided
further insults until only recently, when the vast, thinly populated expanses
of Brazil were wounded from above once more.
- On October 9, 1999 an enormous sonic boom rent the air
above the Amazonian logging camp/village of Sao Félix do Xingu on
a clear afternoon, spreading terror among the lumberjacks and the Kaiapós
natives who occupy the area. A scintillating object roared over the city,
leaving a wake of black smoke qualified by the onlookers as "similar
to that of a rocket". The smoke trail extended for some 18 miles into
the nearby mountains as the object disappeared from view.
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- The inevitable detonation followed seconds later. Witness
Gildemar de Souza noted that "it was a colossal explosion, like a
bomb, that made the ground shake." Had anyone in the logging camp
been of an occultist bent, they might have reasonably assumed that Nostradamus'
Great King of Terror had arrived a few months late.
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- Local radio station "Rede BAND" took it upon
itself to organize a search party to find out what had really fallen into
the mountains. Members of the radio station's team were almost completely
convinced that a meteor of some sort had fallen in the vicinity and discouraged
any talk about alien vehicle. This choice, however laudable, did nothing
to discourage speculation among the locals that a stricken spaceship had
plowed into their region. Believers in the alien hypothesis bolstered their
belief with the fact that no distress calls had been received concerning
any downed Brazilian aircraft.
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- Rede BAND's expedition used a small aircraft to get
as close to the site of events as possible, and then employed a small boat
to reach the Xingu's headwaters. Friendly Kaiapó tribesmen led them
to the spot in the jungle where the crash occurred and the tropical vegetation
still smoldered a full two weeks after the impact: giant hardwoods had
been uprooted and burned and the jungle floor had been furrowed. No traces
of machinery or meteoritic rock were in evidence; stranger still was an
odd area where the trees pointed away from impact's probable epicenter.
All of this puzzled Rómulo Angélica, the Rede BAND expedition's
geologist, who was at a loss to explain how despite the fact that the area
looked like a meteor-stricken landscape should look, the lack of a "culprit"
was very distressing to the scientists -- as was a peculiar odor which
did not resemble any smell that the expedition members were able to immediately
identify.
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- Although they did not say so, perhaps some of the expedition
members were recalling the still-unexplained Divinolandia impact six years
earlier.
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- In the spring of 1994, farmer Trajano Martins and his
wife, residents of the municipality of Divinolandia deep in the state of
Sao Paulo, were startled to hear a sound similar to that of a low- flying
helicopter followed by the sound of an explosion. Running out of his house
to see what had occurred, he was startled to see a large boulder on a nearby
hill completely enveloped in a cloud of white smoke.
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- Fortunately for the Martins, a surveyor had been shooting
the landscape a few miles away and was able to witness an object "reflecting
the sun's light" fall out of the sky directly toward the location
indicated by the farmer. This corroboration prompted the University of
Sao Paulo to send out a team to investigate the event and recover the meteorite.
However, their efforts were in vain: not even the smallest fragment of
rock was found. The research team's verdict was that if a meteor had been
involved, it must have buried itself into the ground.
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- But this explanation did not suffice for members of
the Grupo Ufologico de Guarujá, who contacted Professor Francisco
Donizetti and asked him to look further into the matter. Glad to oblige,
the scholar visited Divinolandia and was impressed by the way in which
the large boulder had been shattered by whatever external force had been
brought to bear against it. He corroborated the lack of any meteoritic
fragments and ventured the suggestion that the event may have been a "shock
wave of an unknown nature", remarking that a similarly strange event
had taken place in the late '70s at Aguas da Prata, where a strange celestial
object had fallen on a coffee plantation, setting it on fire and creating
a hole well over fifty feet (16 m) deep.
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- Argentina's Aeroliths or Saucers?
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- Many people in South America, particularly those given
to reading books on the spiritism of Allan Kardec and esoterica in general,
had been keenly aware of the arrival of the year 1999 and the dreadful
cataclysmic portents for the "seventh month" of said year forecast
by Michel de Nostradamus in the 16th century concerning a "king of
terror" that would appear in the sky. When nothing happened, trepidation
increased rather than abated, since the cosmic intruder was probably delayed
for reasons not even Nostradamus could have explained on a good night.
The terrifying omen would appear like the thief in the night described
by the Apostle Paul.
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- On Tuesday, January 25, 2000, the noontime routine of
the Argentinean village of Sachayoj in the Andean foothills was disrupted
by Nostradamus' late arrival: an object described as a glowing ball of
flame roared across the daylight skies, rending the air with dull, deafening
roar and frightening the locals into prayer. What happened shortly afterward
was a repetition of the Brazilian incidents--a loud explosion was heard
throughout the Santiago del Estero region as energy was released from the
impact point. The ground shook, although not as powerfully as it might
in this earthquake-prone part of the Americas. It was all over in a matter
of minutes, and the townspeople's gratitude at being spared turned into
normal human inquisitiveness: had it really been a bolide, or was it a
crashed UFO similar to the one which had allegedly fallen in 1995 near
the Argentinean town of Metán, some 200 miles to the north? UFOs
had already been reported earlier in January over the military facilities
at Puerto Belgrano, so anything was possible at this juncture.
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- It took a few days for teams of specialists from all
over Argentina to gather their instruments and report to Santiago del Estero,
the largest city closest to Sachayoj. The military and their scientific
advisors proceeded to comb the area for signs of the alien object--whether
natural or artificial--but were soon hampered by the local geography of
thick forests covering yawning canyons and gullies -- uninhabited and mostly
unexplored, but filled with a variety of subtropical animals on both banks
of the Salado River Finding the object would involve the daunting prospect
of doing it all on foot, aided by the seasoned backwoodsmen who inhabited
the region.
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- Town commissioner Olga Bertolotti told journalists that
a farm worker at an estancia (ranch) known as Fabril Chaquena had witnessed
the object's descent and that the local police was reading the required
expedition based on the man's indication. Bertolotti informed the Intervoz
de Córdoba newspaper that "with the arrival of the year 2000
and apocalyptic beliefs, townspeople are concerned about the strange object
that fell from the sky
- and are following the events closely." The Commissioner
also added that her greatest concern was the awareness that the object
had fallen from space and was therefore an unknown quantity. It is not
entirely unreasonable to surmise the Bertolotti was aware of her region's
propensity toward abnormal activity: not only had something odd fallen
near Metán a few years ago, but the area was also one of the country's
ufological hot spots. The spectacular Trancas Case (in which a farmhouse
was besieged by six UFOs which deployed "heat rays" against it)
had taken place not too far away, and the city of Salta and its extensive
history of unusual celestial events was a nearby regional capital.
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- Reporters also took an interest in some of the eyewitness
accounts brought to their attention, such as the testimony of school janitor
Ramon Agustín, who explained that the event had filled him with
"considerable panic and fear" given the sheer size and rapid
descent of the mystery object, whose loud, thundering noise caused domestic
animals to run amok. "I looked at it and felt paralyzed, I didn't
know what to do. After the event, I ran away and stayed with my family,"
he told the press.
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- A full week since the mystery object burned a path across
the skies of northern Argentina, the authorities determined that the villages
of Tintina, Otumpa, Sachayoj and the marches of the Gran Chaco were the
likeliest to hold the answer to the mystery. Journalists had discovered
that the area's inhabitants--normally taciturn farmers--had become quite
talkative about this intrusion into the sedate lifestyle. The owner of
one business establishment was even able to pinpoint the location of the
alleged crash site basing himself on the descriptions given by his clientele.
Another local told reporters of fellow residents who had hired themselves
out as guides to the growing number of technicians and officials engaged
in searching for the object in the vegetation-covered canyonlands of the
area.
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- As the search expanded to cover other possible crash
locations the office of the comisario (sheriff) in the town of Quimilí
rejected suggestions that an aircraft may have been involved, adding that
the eyewitnesses' reports seemed to agree with the collision having occurred
at a place known as Campo del Cielo --Heaven's Field--where a massive meteorite
shower appears to have occurred millennia ago (an area similar to Mexico's
Zone of Silence, which would appear to exert a certain attraction over
inbound celestial objects)
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- Much in the same way as with the Xingú crash
of 1999, the private expeditions seemed to have a higher profile and better
luck than the official ones. A radio station (Radio Mocovi) and a television
station (Charata Cable) hired a small plane to fly their respective crews
over the possible impact site. According to radio broadcaster Juan Carlos
Barros " [the area covered] is a forested area and no anomaly could
be observed which might have been caused by the possible fall of an object.
It is an area of great size, and if that's where it fell, it would take
a great deal of effort to reach the area and search it."
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- The Santiago del Estero meteorite/bolide/UFO story faded
from the paper after a few weeks after experts and local guides alike threw
in the metaphorical towel. As in the Divinolandia case in Brazil, the object
had behaved like the Cheshire Cat--but this time not even its smile remained.
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- The Mexican Bolides
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- Paulina González was a highly intelligent young
woman from the town of Villa Cardel, Veracruz -- not far from Jalapa, the
state capital. She had entered into the service of the author's family
in Mexico City and quickly became an inseparable member of the family,
playing the roles of housekeeper and companion with equal ease. Her qualities
as a storyteller were unparalleled, particularly concerning the smallest
details of farm life in rural Mexico.
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- Perhaps one of her most memorable accounts was the story
of the day "the world almost came to an end" had it not been--she
was convinced--through the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe and
a supporting cast of lesser-known saints.
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- It was noon in Villa Cardel and she was returning home
from school for the midday meal when she noticed people screaming and pointing
to the heavens as a "white ball of fire" bore down on the town.
Shouts of "the world is ending" rang from people's throats, but
the bolide never struck the earth...it continued on its path out to sea.
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- Paulina retold the story a number of times, but it would
not be until many years later that I would come upon a similar account
highlighting the state of Veracruz's proclivity toward these phenomena
in John Keel's Operation Trojan Horse: residents of the city of Veracruz
on the Gulf of Mexico were wakened by the a loud rumbling sound in the
early morning hours of March 27, 1968. One witness to this terrifying event
remarked that the source of light and its attendant noise made her feel
cool at first and then cold, as night was turned into a frightening semblance
of a daytime that was still many hours away. The light intensified and
the ground shook as if in resonance. Again, before the world ended on that
occasion, the "bolide" appeared to rise again and vanish. Keel
notes that corroboration for the event was made by the crew of a Mexican
warship and an oil tanker some twenty-five miles away from Veracruz. These
distant onlookers were able to describe it as "two or three objects
in the center of a bright ball of fire."
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- But we would be mistaken to limit these bizarre near-misses
(if they in fact are) to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Little over
a year after the still-unexplained incident over Veracruz, a colossal bolide
appeared in the early morning skies over the northern Mexican desert. February
8, 1969 could have been a date every bit as memorable as Tunguska--written
in letters of fire--as residents of Ceballos, Durango woke up to the blinding
light of a fiery sphere that headed straight for their town, illuminating
every feature of the rocky desert and causing understandable feelings of
dread. The rumbling sound of the object filled the streets of Ceballos
as the townspeople came out to see what could well be their last day on
earth.
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- But unlike the Veracruz objects, this bolide stayed
on course and was not deviated by any unnatural force. It hit the ground
near the village of Pueblito de Allende--scant miles from Ceballos--and
its shock wave fanned out almost immediately, causing a deafening clap
of sound.
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- The Allende Meteorite is a matter of public record,
but what is less known is that the Zone of Silence, this arbitrary patch
of desert at the location where the states of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua
meet, is constantly peppered by smaller stones mysteriously attracted to
the region from outer space. These skyfalls have added to the Zone's reputation
as an enchanted region. Similar "meteorite attractors" exist
in other locations, such as the aforementioned "Campo del Cielo"
in Argentina.
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- Conclusion
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- Living, as we do, in an age obsessed with the possible
obliteration of our civilization due to meteorite impacts, interest in
the subject is high and has spawned a number of motion pictures and book
projects. But we needn't go as far as northern Asia to find some amazing
stories: on the 10th of August, 1972, North America almost had its very
own Tunguska as a massive meteor, having an estimated weight of two million
pounds, burned its way into Earth's atmosphere leaving a wake of sonic
booms over the state of Utah. Closing in at nine miles a second, the space
rock seemed ready to slam against our planet until it rebounded against
the denser air of the lower atmosphere and gently returned back into space.
Astronomers estimated that the object's trajectory was leading it toward
ground zero in southern Canada, slamming into the province of Alberta with
a force equivalent to a 400-kiloton nuclear bomb.
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- One gets the impression that, like a cat, Earth seems
to be running out of lives...
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