Saturday, August 08, 2020

More on the Norwood meteor

I wanted to say more about what I found about the Norwood meteor story that I came across last night. 

I did a little research-Googling and came across an article from the October 9, 1909 Bridgeport Evening Farmer that gives a better idea where the Nickerson farm was. 

The Bridgeport evening farmer. (Bridgeport, Conn.), 09 Oct. 1909. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84022472/1909-10-09/ed-1/seq-5/> 

A short notice in the October 23, 1909 New York Dramatic Mirror notes,
They have the famous Norwood Meteor at Austin and Stone's [Dime Museum] this week, but it does not interfere in the least with the Mahetta girls on the attractive bill, headed by Barney and Cleopatra.
The Science articles that I mentioned in my previous post (plus a few more I came across since then) give more details about the "meteor." Frank W. Very, who was an MIT graduate and at the time the director of the Westwood Astrophysical Observatory (which seems to have been somewhere around what is currently Xaverian Brothers High School), wrote the first scientific discussion of the meteor. In his first article, "Fall of a meteorite in Norwood, Massachusetts" (published Jan. 28, 1910), Very tells of a "meteoric stone [that] fell to earth on the farm of Mr. W. P. Nickerson, of Norwood, Mass." He gives his estimates of its measurements, including its volume (1.75 cubic feet), weight ("perhaps 275 pounds"), and density (2.5). He describes its structure and its odor, and compares it to other types of rock and pronouncing it "entirely different from any meteorite on record." 

Very describes where the rock was found and the conditions surrounding its finding: "The bolide [large meteor] fell vertically through the bars of a gateway, breaking every bar and burying itself in the sand directly underneath to a depth of three feet." He notes that Nickerson and a neighbor from Westwood both attested to the rock's heat after it was exhumed. He tries to account for the vertical fall of the meteor by speculating that "if the angle of the path [of descent] is a high one, atmospheric friction and impact retard the meteoric velocity to so great an extent that gravity gets the victory, and the last part of the meteor's fall is vertical." While he admits there is no evidence that meteors usually hit the ground vertically, he argues that "[t]he present instance is so well authenticated, that it seems worth putting on record." Finally, he notes that several people in Norwood observed a falling object the evening of October 7.

The next article in Science, "On the so-called Norwood 'meteorite'" (published Feb. 25, 1910), by Edmund Hovey of the American Museum of Natural History, calls Very's conclusions about the meteorite "entirely erroneous," calling the rock "a characteristic glacial bowlder of a basic igneous dike rock." He cites a microscopic analysis of a slice of the rock and another geologist who compared the rock to a "rock type from Essex County, Mass." 

In addition to the analysis of the rock, Hovey brings into the discussion the testimony of Nickerson, calling it into question. He notes that when he visited Nickerson, the rock was being displayed in a "dime museum" in Boston. He says that while Nickerson's testimony to him was similar to what Very had been told, Nickerson added that there had been "a bright flash of light" on the evening of Oct. 7. Hovey argues, however, that a meteor the size of the specimen in question would have created a much larger light, "illuminat[ing] the region over many square miles with almost the light of day, ... but no such occurrence was reported from Norwood." Finally, Hovey cites his "sixteen years" of experience with claims about falling meteorites to conclude that he is not as convinced of the genuineness of this meteor as Very was.

In the March 18, 1910 issue of Science, Very wrote an article calling "The Norwood 'meteorite' a fraud. How meteoritic evidence may be manufactured." He concluded that, after further research, the rock was not a meteor and that "the whole thing is a cunningly devised fraud." "In order that investigators may be on their guard against similar deceptions," he announces, "it seems to me desirable to put the facts on record."

Very begins with a testimony of a witness not mentioned earlier, a "trained hunter with excellent powers of observation" who gives a detailed account of seeing a bright object falling from the sky and "in the direction of the Nickerson farm" at around 6:24 p.m. on Oct. 7, 1909. Some of the details that the hunter is supposed to have given seem a bit technical, such as the observation that as the object fell, "[t]here was an increase in apparent size in the ratio of not over 3 to 1" and that the object "gave off numerous white sparklets on either side, about as bright as Polaris." (If these observations were indeed those of the hunter, it might indicate that people were more observant back in 1909 than they are now!) Very admits that although other people in Norwood confirmed many of the hunter's statements, "singularly, I could find no witnesses from surrounding towns after assiduous search." 

Very then goes on to give the "real facts," which involve a vaudeville show proprietor who bought a rock that was purported to be a meteorite that had fallen in New Hampshire and changed the story: 
Accordingly, the stone (previously heated?) was taken to Norwood in an automobile, by night, and deposited on the farm of Mr. Nickerson, who was in the secret. I have talked with one of the employees of the dime-museum, who confessed that he was the man who broke the bars in the night. 

There's another discussion of a possible rocket that was fired from a balloon to give the impression of a meteorite falling. I guess this is what Very meant when he called the fraud "cunningly devised." He concludes with another detailed description of the rock (perhaps to regain face after having been fooled by the story of the meteorite?) 

The next article in that issue of Science is "The Norwood meteorite (?)" by G. F. Loughlin, who is mentioned in the preceding article as having helped Very identify some of the minerals in the rock. Loughlin also describes the rock, noting among other things that "the ground mass has suffered marked corrosion, such as is produced by swamp waters," and concludes that "[i]t remains ... for the meteorite specialists to decide whether or not a newly fallen meteorite may be similar in mineral characters to hydrothermally altered terrestrial rocks." Finally, he writes,

Professor Very's argument that the stone is a meteorite is based, in short, partly on absence of kaolinization and ferruginous staining, but chiefly upon the verbal testimony cited in his article; the writer's argument to the contrary rests on the altered character evidenced by mineral relations, and the swamp-corroded surface, which coupled with the point of discovery, are at least suggestive of fraud. (link to Wikipedia added)

Very appears to have been fortunate that his article was printed in front of Loughlin's, since the latter raises the possibility that Very was fooled by the fraudsters. Loughlin's second letter to the magazine (and the last one I'll cover here) is just a note published April 15, 1910 to distance himself from Very's March 18 findings. As he puts it, although he did help identify some minerals, "as is apparent to any petrographer, I am in no way guilty of the extinction angles recorded by Professor Very, or of the novel method of determining the composition of the feldspar." Loughlin is evidently referring to a paragraph in Very's article in which he describes the extinction angle of the rock. I have no idea what either Very or Loughlin are talking about, but from Loughlin's tone in the letter, it sounds as though he is not impressed with Very's methods. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) 

Evidently the Norwood meteor was a big deal, and I'd be surprised if Win Everett didn't write a column about it. Unfortunately, at present I don't have access to his columns, but maybe when this coronavirus business is over, I'll pay a visit to the Norwood Historical Society to see. I found reference to a Boston Post article from 1921 that might have mentioned "the Norwood meteor hoax," but I don't have a Newspapers.com account. 

I'll come back to this at some point in the future to make sense of all of this. (Maybe after I've done a PhD in geology...)

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