Ann Hodges: The Only Confirmed Person To Be Hit By A Meteorite And Live

Despite the vast number of meteors that fall from our skies each year, there has only ever been one confirmed impact with a human: the poor and unfortunate Ann Hodges.

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It was November 30, 1953, a day like any other, when Ann decided to take a nap on her couch in the town of Oak Grove, near Sylacauga, Alabama. As she lay out on what should have been a comfortable space for rest, a grapefruit-sized meteorite crashed down into the room, where it ricocheted off a wooden radio before hitting her upper hip. Despite the force of this rude entrance, the meteorite only managed to leave her with a nasty bruise.

Shortly before Ann had her extraterrestrial encounter, other people in the area had seen a bright light trailing through the sky. This fitted with what happened next, but as this was at the height of Cold War paranoia, many people believed the red light was a missile or a plane.

As incredible as this story sounds, it was actually documented by NASA at the time.

Every year, millions of pieces of space rock enter Earth’s atmosphere but burn up before they can reach the ground. It is estimated that less than 10,000 meteorites actually hit the ground or water, so the chances of a person being struck by one is actually pretty small (but crucially, not zero).

"You have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time," Michael Reynolds, a Florida State College astronomer, told National Geographic while discussing Ann Hodges’s case in 2013. 

But while this may seem like the end of the tale, the story of the meteorite is more complex than this. It turns out that before it ruined Ann’s nap, it actually split in half. One half we know about, while the other was later discovered by a farmer called Julius Kempis McKinney, who managed to sell it to an attorney who bought it on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

Ann’s portion of the rock had a more exciting existence as it became the topic of heated interest and legal disputes. Even her landlady and government officers wanted it, but eventually she became frustrated with the media attention. After a brief stint with the US Air Force, the meteorite was donated to the  Alabama Museum of Natural History, two years after it hit home (literally). The meteorite is still there to this day.

Although this is the only confirmed story of a direct impact with a human, there are others that claim a similar situation. For instance, in 1992, a boy in Uganda was reportedly hit on the head by one, but it has not been officially confirmed despite being referenced by NASA.

It is possible that one very unlucky person was actually killed by a meteorite, but this took place in 1888. In 2020, a study was published that explained how researchers had found three Ottoman-Turkish letters that described an incident in Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. According to these sources, on August 22 that year, a meteor fell from the sky and not only damaged local crops but also killed one man while paralyzing another.

In 2016, it was reported that a man in India had been killed by a meteorite, which also left a hole in the ground. However, NASA later challenged this claim, believing the size of the crater did not make sense with the story.