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Historic Disasters That Were Way Worse Than People Think

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2020 33 min

Yellow River - 1887 Yellow River flood — 1887 Yellow River Flood. Hakai Magazine

15. The Meteor Shower from Hell

Meteor showers occur when streams of cosmic debris known as meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds. The transition from the airless vacuum of space to the increasingly dense atmosphere of Earth causes them to burn and disintegrate, producing meteor showers. Streaking the dark skies, especially on clear and starry nights, meteor showers are among the most breathtakingly beautiful celestial sights. Usually.

In 1490, in Ming Dynasty China, meteor showers stopped being breathtakingly beautiful to the good people of Ch’ing Yang in Shaanxi Province. They witnessed one such shower suddenly go from the delightfully picturesque to the horrific, when one of the falling objects burst in the air during atmospheric reentry, killing thousands.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.