Chicago devastated by comet impact

Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives.

New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere.

I was unaware of the other fires, which seem to have been quite dramatic:

Wood cited eyewitness reports of spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke and "fire balloons" falling from the sky to bolster his theory. If the fire had been caused by comet debris, which is believed to have consisted of small pieces of frozen methane, acetylene or other highly combustible chemicals, it also would explain the cause of the fires blazing north of Chicago, which wiped out 2,000 people and burned 4 million acres of farm and prairie lands. . .

In all, over a 24-hour period, an area of land the size of Connecticut was burned. Wood speculates the main body of the comet crashed into Lake Michigan, with peripheral fragments causing the fires in Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Read the full article at Discovery News.

Posted by David on March 6, 2004 10:21 PM