Schoolboy Survives Meteor Strike

A 14-year-old German schoolboy survived with just a scar on his hand after being hit by a meteorite traveling 30,000 miles an hour, the Daily Telegraph reports. The red-hot pebble buried itself in the road after bouncing off Gerrit Blank, who doused it with a drink, dug it out of its crater, and took it to school. Tests confirmed that the pea-sized rock came from space.

"At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand," Blank said. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.” An Alabama housewife hit by a meteorite in 1954 is the only other person known to have survived a meteor strike.
(More meteorites stories.)