On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp (above) is watching television
in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a loud
crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What
she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole in the rear end
of her car, a 1980 Chevy Malibu (above); a matching hole in the gravel
driveway underneath the car; and in the hole, the culprit: what looked 
like an ordinary, bowling-ball–sized rock. It was extremely heavy
for its size (it weighed about 28 pounds), shaped like a football and
warm to the touch; also, it smelled vaguely of rotten eggs. The next day,
a curator from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite and is estimated to be
4.4 billion years old.

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A portion of the Peekskill meteorite in the National Museum of Natural History.