Paper: Waterloo Daily Courier City: Waterloo, Iowa Date: Thursday, February 19, 1948 Page: 1
Fire Ball Over Six States Believed Bursting Meteor
Kansas City, Mo. - (AP) - Observers Thursday sought further explanation of a strange "ball of fire," possibly a disintegrating meteor, seen in six states.
The brilliant explosion thousands of feet in the air was observed in Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Colorado Wednesday.
Oscar Monnig secretary of the National Meteoralogical Society said at Fort Worth, Tex., he felt sure the fire ball was a meteor disintegrating.
Directors A. W. Recht said there was "no meteor showers and no other known phenomena in the sky to explain it."
At the University of Nebraska, professor of astronomy Oliver C. Collins said "it might very well have been a meteor."
After the flash civil aeronautic and state highway patrol officials received reports of flaming plan crashes from widely scattered points. All reports proved groundless.
Newspaper offices also received numerous calls from observers:
C. L. Jacoby, editor of the Norton (Kan) Daily Telegram, said a number of callers asked excitedly if an atomic bomb had exploded.
The explosion, Jacoby reported, rattled windows in a 35-mile area in northwest Kansas. He said it occurred at 4:50 p.m. CST.
C. W. Sulton, a Stillwater, Okla. airport employee described the flash as "about the size of a large bucket with a six or eight foot tail."
M. B. Farrell, Gering, Neb., said he saw an object "like a ball of fire" fall in a meadow five miles west of Kimball, Neb.
He was unable to find the object when he stopped his car to investigate.
A large white cloud was visible in the sky for an hour after the flash, some observers said.
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Mark Bostick www.meteoritearticles.com
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