Tonight I thought about a gigantic meteor I saw in the mid-60’s- I was thinking 1967- and came across this post while searching for the details. I was 14 at the time. It was a beautiful, calm, clear evening (late spring/early summer, before July 4th because it was much too early for fireworks, as I recall it) and a bunch of us were playing baseball on the school field. We heard a roaring sound and saw it moving, seemingly slowly, but most certainly at a velocity of thousands of miles per hour, across the sky, from south to north and nearly overhead. We were on the NY/PA border near the northeast corner of PA. A bunch of kids started exclaiming that one of the local “bad boys” was shooting off fireworks but, having been a fan of all things astronomical for as long as I could remember, I recognized it for what it was. It was a very large meteor and didn’t seem to be very high in the sky, but that was certainly a misconception and a testament to it’s size. It was shedding small pieces as it burned and was absolutely audible for several minutes. I remember hearing on the radio the next day that it had been visible from Virginia to well up into Canada, where it eventually burned up without landing. Seeing the size of that rock and it’s perceived altitude, I would have bet it was going to land in the next county. It was certainly the most spectacular sky show I was ever personally privy to and I have never forgotten it.
I wonder if at least some of these memories, around sunset time, are actually just sunlit aircraft contrails? They have sparked several “meteor” stories.
I also saw something happened…my mother and two sisters and one of my sister’s boyfriend were outside. He was getting ready to leave. I stayed inside the house and was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework…I was either in fifth or sixth grade…it was night time and I saw a VERY BRIGHT light light up the sky and I ran outside to see what it was…but everyone else didn’t seem to notice as they weren’t saying anything but saying goodbyes to my sister’s boyfriend…and I didn’t say what I saw, and I don’t know why, but I didn’t ask them if they noticed what happened…and they never said anything about it and it has been something that stuck with me for years and I decided to check out the Internet to see if anyone saw this thing too and I found this site…It was either 1966 or 1967…and it was in the summer time…
Or at least punched a hole in a Chevy Malibu! 
(Yes, I realize that’s not the same meteor as you’re speaking of. But it’s a funny story.)
Myself and a friend saw a huge meteor sometime between 1965 and 1969. The meteor was heading North. The time was about 2:00 AM I think it was in the Spring. I was about 14 yrs. old. We first noticed it when it hit the atmosphere and it was like a flashbulb lighting the sky and ground. At 2AM it went from total darkness to a pure bright white light. It was in the sky behind us, we whipped around to look at what it was. It was a round object that was glowing like the end of a lit cigarette does. I remember hearing it also. It seemed so close that it was like I could reach out and touch it. It looked like it would land in a field nearby. But it disappeared behind the trees and we didn’t hear or see it hi the earth. I am sure of the time and location, but not the year. Anyone have an idea where the meteor hit the earth?
I know this blog is old,but i grew up in Stratford Ct. in Lordship which is as the crow flies probably not more then 4 or 5 miles from Devon,and i remember that myself.If i remember it was almost dark and i seen this big fire ball burning moving it seemed slowly across the sky,and i swear i thought i could hear it hissing.Anyway it was heading north east and it looked like it was going to maybe hit around your area,or Milford,but it went all the way to Canada.I have never seen anything like it.i have seen many falling stars,and the Northern lights,but it was one of the coolest things i ever seen in the sky.I live in Oregon and left the east coast over 40 years back.My buddies use to jump off that old Devon bridge on the Housatonic.
I’m not 100% on the year. 1967 Sounds right, and I clearly saw a huge tumbling asteroid traveling from north to south. My exact position at that time was 30.317664/-97.678014. It was completely luminous and stayed course.
You couldn’t see a tumbling asteroid. A streak maybe. So, I call bullshit.
samclem, where are your manners? Couldn’t you at least have welcomed Cochetaman to the Dope before you said his claim was bullshit? 
I to saw a large meteor in the mid to late sixties that have always been engraved in my memory. I have read some of the post and it must of been a very active time for large meteors. The one l saw was traveling slowly in the north sky traveling from west to east right above the tree line, it was huge about the size of a trash can lid, was what l remember as being green in color with a green tail. I too lived on the suburbs of Wash. DC in Prince Georges Co. And was on my bike in the evening just before dark. I remembering trying to reading in the Wash. Post and there was a report of something hitting up north l think near Newfoundland. I remember seeing water in the picture.
Chiarizia1 writes:
> . . . about the size of a trash can lid . . .
This is a useless comparison unless you tell us what distance you mean the lid to have been observed from. Do you mean that it was the size of a lid as seen from 10 feet away? Or do you mean the size of a lid seen from 50 feet away? Or 200 feet away? Or a mile away? Or five miles away?
A trash can lid at about 20 ft.t
It didn’t have a bright blinding light to it neither it just wlooked light it was burning
Why the hell didn’t anyone record it on their cellphone?
I saw it too! I was about the same age (8-9) and living in Westchester and it was 1966-67. It was dusk and summery and I was in front of my house with my parents. I heard and then saw this enormous rock flying from south to north and I was looking toward the west. Yes! Saw the pock-marked craters in the rock and streamy vapors toward the front and the fire streaking in the back. It was crackling. It was moving SO slowly and it seemed like it was not at all far overhead. I got a very good look at it. It is one of the most magical images of my childhood.
I remember hearing that it landed somewhere in Canada and what’s more, I recall the next day in the local paper there was a headline that read “Did You See It Too?!” I don’t remember whether there was an accompanying photograph or not. Now I am interested in finding out whether I can find the article as an archive.
Thanks so much for all those who add their memories of this incredible event! So funny we were all about the same age!
No, you didn’t. That is complete and utter nonsense. You are conflating imagery from a bad movie to be real life.
There was a Great Leonid Shower in 1966 so maybe it corresponds? All I know is the meteor was very large and appeared very close, so close that details were readily discernible upon its surface.
Absolutely NOT. No conflation. My mother remembers it too. Just spoke to her today about it before I researched online.
If you saw a meteor that was very large and very close in any way similar to what you describe, you (and many thousands, possibly a few million others) would have died that day in 1966. Look up the Chelyabinsk meteorite and Tunguska meteorite (or possibly comet fragment) to see what happens with bolides much, much, much smaller than the rock you are describing.
Meteors from meteor showers are sand-grain sized. Ones big enough to look like a huge roman candle round? A pebble. The size of a breadbox and it lights up the night sky brighter than the full moon. Meteoroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at tens of miles per second–at that speed, hitting the atmosphere 30 miles or so above the ground (air so thin that you would die of suffocation in moments if you were up there) the air in front of it does not have time to flow around it and is compressed and heated up enough to melt the meteoroid (that is the light of a meteor that you see, caused by compression, not friction as commonly thought.)
The surface of the meteoroid is very quickly heated to it’s melting point and flows off the back of the meteoroid (this is what causes the smoke trail.) If the meteoroid is small enough, it is melted away entirely in the second or less that you see a typical meteor. If the meteoroid is larger the extreme stress will cause it to break into smaller fragments which will both burn faster and be decelerated more quickly than the intact original. That is what you see in images of meteors fragmenting in dashcam and security videos. That liquid rock flowing off the back of the meteoroid takes all of the heat with it, exposing more cold undersurface. When the compressive heating stops, the remaining meteoroid remains space-cold. Within a couple of seconds, you stop seeing the meteor because it has slowed down too much to heat the air to incandescent temperatures, but the surviving fragments (if there are surviving fragments) will continue to fall for multiple more miles (both horizontally and vertically) after that, building up velocity just as they would if they were rocks dropped from an airplane. A meteorite will always hit the ground at at least hundreds of miles per hour.
If the meteoroid is much, much bigger than a breadbox and is strong enough to survive atmospheric stress, only then will it continue to the ground with the hypersonic velocity needed to produce incandescence and a smoke trail. You would not be able to see details on the surface of a meteoroid traveling at that speed because the whole thing would be glowing painfully bright. That hypersonic passage through that atmosphere would be dumping massive amounts of heat into the atmosphere. Rather than seeing the craters on the surface of the “vapory, firey” asteroid, the whole thing would be incandescently bright. Also, incandescently hot and generating a massive sonic boom, so you wouldn’t have long to admire the view before you were flying through the air in flames with your organs liquefied.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone; I cannot put my finger on it now.