Show 13 3 A I 1 I 1 RECENTLY FELL IN THE VICINITY OF MADRID I 1 I 1 who fir naturally superstitious spaniards bev it a warning from heaven havn I 1 came from a clr clear 8 sky bow A HE spanish newspapers that have reached this country in the last mall mail are full of details of the bursting of t the it e b big I 1 g air olite over madrid recently the phenomenon that so BO greatly frightened madrid and other places place s not far from the capital Is not so BO very Ro uncommon common but it Is seldom observed on en so startling a scale the concussion from the explosion was so BO violent that every building in madrid was shaken many windows were broken and a few light structures were levelled bevelled level led with the ground the terror inspired by the ec occurrence currence particularly among the ignorant and superstitious was all the greater because the event was of course unexpected and it came on a day of beauty when all nature was bright and gladsome the sky shy was cloudless the I 1 morning or ing un sun was radiant the shops had put on their freshest monday morning air and the streets were just beginning to be thronged thron ged with shoppers pedestrians and traffic when the deafening sound of the explosion was heard tho those e who happened to be looking at the sky say that at the instant of the explosion there then was a vivid glare of blinding light that for the moment outshone the sun and then there instantly appeared at the place where the disturbance originated what looked like a cloud of white and bluish tint bordered with red which moved east at a tremendous rate leaving behind a thin train that may have been dust particles from the meteor illumined bv the sun the largest shell shot from a modern gun and bursting in midair could not have produced a sound approaching the stunning detonation of this explosion many people did not recognize its origin in the air and thought some terrible calamity had occurred at the surface the enormous energy of the disturbance probably equalled equal led at least that of a large powder magazine which had blown up for the whole city seemed to be shaken as by an earth earthquake quake and the agitation of the atmosphere was shown by the rapid fall and rise of the barometers we may imagine with what brilliancy this must have shone phone in the sunlit sk when we know that it was visible over at least three fourths of spain as it shot through the air above the peninsula with a speed several times as great as that of the swiftest war projectile the mountaineers among the pyrenees Pyre nees saw it and wondered even at frances famous watering place biarritz Biar ritz on the edge of spain the streak of light athwart the sky was observed so it was observed from the atlantic to the mediterranean for the people on the east coast at valencia saw it and in the south it was noticed as far as the southern tier of provinces nearly all spain was treated to a pyrotechnic display on that morning some damage was done also at places other than madrid for the big red hot stone partly disintegrated on its way and incandescent fragments that showered down upon the town of logrono miles northeast of the capital set two buildings on fire and at Bor borgos goff miles north of madrid three fragments from the main body started off as meteors on their own account and fell among the houses other pieces of the grayish stone that were flung filing off near madrid were picked up while still hot so we see that this celestial visitor after striking out atmosphere scattered fragments along its way it Is quite probable that the main body passed completely over spain and tell fell j into the mediterranean it seems likely that a t it crossed the spanish peninsula in less than half a minute for these little objects travel with tremendous velocity probably many of the fragments that broke off from the stone traveled along with it in parallel courses but a few of them dropped to the ground the story of its if night flight is very much uke like that of the famous meteorite whom passage over about half of our continent from west to east was observed in december 1876 it first became visible in the western part of the indian territory and it passed pa d over all the intervening states until it was last observed in the state of new york and it traversed this vast distance in about two minutes the height above the earth at which it was waa first observed Is in believed to have been over sixty miles and when over central new york it is thought to have been over thirty miles high numy many explosions were heard along its path and many fragments that were broken off traveled along in its train as a flock of smaller meteors and a few of them fen fell to the ground an indiana farmer heard the dull thud with which one of them struck the ground near his house 06 and he found the stone in the morning and it was waa declared to be undoubtedly a part of the meteorite in the same way explosions were heard in various cities as the spanish visitor flitted flirted along and as an in the ewe case of our these explosions were followed by detonations deto nations each a little less potent than its predecessor and each a guins guine echo the rook fc fa S c f |