Indian Man Thought to Be First Ever Killed By Meteorite

[jpak]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by azurnoir (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Time

A man was killed after being struck by a meteorite in India over the weekend, apparently becoming the first person in recorded history to die in such a manner.

A bus driver, identified as V. Kamaraj, died after suffering severe injuries while he was walking close to the cafeteria at the Bharathidasan Engineering College, where the object hit, according to the Wall Street Journal. Three others were injured in the blast.

“There was a noise like a big explosion,” G. Baskar, principal of the college in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore district, told the newspaper. “It was an abnormal sound that could be heard till at least 3 kilometers [about 2 miles] away.”

Meteorite-caused injuries or deaths are incredibly rare, according to NASA, which said on its website that there is no record “in modern times of any person being killed by a meteorite.” “An individual’s chance of being killed by a meteorite is small, but the risk increases with the size of the impacting comet or asteroid,” NASA said.

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Read more: http://time.com/4211780/meteorite-india-college/

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poor guy

[vdogg]

1. Wow

Guess when your number's up it's up. Wonder what the odds of that happening are.

[happyslug]

2. I did some research on this matter a few weeks ago, this would the SECOND person killed...

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/back2.html

It was on a DU Thread about lighting and Hillary wining six out of six coin tosses:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141334438

We now have TWO data points to the calculations of the odds, sounds like once every 1000 years.

[MynameisBlarney]

3. Yeah, I thought I'd heard of this happening before

Nice work

[ffr]

4. His mother always said he was one in a million.

Sorry. Sad news. What an unusual way to go.

[azurnoir]

5. Locking duplicate thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141340661