Ruth Hamilton of British Columbia awoke to a nightmare when a meteorite nearly crashed with her head. Hamilton felt the dust on her face and began piecing together the occurrences that had led to her awakening.
“I just jumped up and turned on the light, I couldn’t figure out what the heck had happened,” Hamilton told Victoria News.
Hamilton contacted 911 after realizing what had occurred to report the meteor fall. Officers initially assumed the event was the consequence of local construction. Kicking Horse Canyon was close to Hamilton’s house. A multi-phase construction project was now underway in the area to improve its two-way highway.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Hamilton told the broadcaster. “I wasn’t sure what to do, so I called 911 and, when I was speaking with the operator, I flipped over my pillow and saw that a rock had slipped between two pillows.”
And, as it turns out, it wasn’t a scary joke. The rock was a fragment of a meteorite that had once shone brightly in the night sky. The discovery was later confirmed by a group of scientists from Western University in Ontario, Canada.
Fellow British Columbians were enjoying the meteor shower at Lake Louise, about 52 miles east of Hamilton. Stargazers came to take photos and gaze at the sight.
Hamilton, on the other hand, was still trembling from the situation’s terror.
“I was shaking and scared when it happened; I thought someone had jumped in or it was a gun or something,” she said. “It’s almost a relief when we realized it could only have fallen out of the sky.”
“Everything about the story was consistent with a meteorite fall, and the fact that this bright fireball had occurred basically right at the same time made it a pretty overwhelming case,” Western astronomy professor Peter Brown told the CBC.
Ann Hodgens, an Alabama woman, was the first person to be directly hit by a meteorite in 1954. An 8.5-pound meteorite blasted through her roof and slammed her on the side of her hip, causing serious bruising, according to Insider.
After Brown and his colleagues have thoroughly examined the rock, Hamilton wishes to preserve it as a remembrance of a strange and extraordinary night.
“I was shaking like a leaf,” Hamilton told the CBC. “You’re sound asleep, safe, you think, in your bed, and you can get taken out by a meteorite, apparently.”
Even though the meteorite was not an aggressive intruder, Hamilton would not have survived if the rock had fallen just a few inches closer.