Shortly after dawn on 15 February 2013, a large meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk (Russia), generating a shockwave that injured some 1,200 people.

According to the popular media, no other bolide on record is known to have caused so many casualties. Have any more violent impacts occurred within human memory?

Sightings of fireballs are certainly recorded aplenty in ancient and legendary sources. For example, in 100 BCE people in the Roman Empire witnessed “a burning shield scattering sparks” (Clipeus ardens … scintillans), which “ran across the sky at sunset from west to east.” The historian of science Richard Stothers suspected this ‘shield’ belonged to the category of spectacular bolides, “which move across the sky more slowly than ordinary shooting stars, but enormously faster than genuine comets”.

When accompanied by a thunderous boom the preferred term is an ‘electrophonic bolide’. A survey of ancient and prehistoric examples of this type proves to be a resounding success. For a day in the summer of 12 BCE, Chinese annals logged this observation: “… the sky was cloudless. There was a rumbling like thunder. A meteor with a head as big as a fou, and a length of some ten-odd zhang, colour bright red and white, went south-eastward from below the Sun”. And for the year 899 CE, the Japanese chronicle Nihon Kiryaku (11th century CE) relates the fall of a meteor to earth with great noise; its designation as a hitodama exposes the popular belief that such a meteor was akin to the soul, which upon death may “visibly leave the body in the form of a round shining ball … It is reported to be blue and white with red spots, or bluish-red, with a flat, round head and a tail”.............................