CRASH LANDED IN BED
Meteorite near-miss
A Canadian woman is thanking her lucky stars after narrowly avoiding a meteorite that slammed into her pillow while she slept, a report said.
Ruth Hamilton was snoozing in her home in Golden, a town in southeastern British Columbia, on Oct. 4 when she heard a crash and felt debris on her face.
“I just jumped up and turned on the light. I couldn’t figure out what the heck had happened,” she told Victoria News.
A police officer who responded to Hamilton’s 911 call initially wondered whether the jagged rock that landed on her pillow might have come from a construction project in the nearby Kicking Horse Canyon.
“We called the canyon project to see if they were doing any blasting, and they weren’t,” Hamilton said.
“But they did say they had seen a bright light in the sky that had exploded and caused some boom.”
“I was shaking and scared when it happened. I thought someone had jumped in or it was a gun or something. It’s almost a relief when we realized it could only have fallen out of the sky,” she said.
She said her grandchildren think the meteorite is pretty cool, so she plans to keep it.
“I’m just totally amazed over the fact that it is a star that came out of the sky. It’s maybe billions of years old,” she said, adding that the scare has given her a new perspective on life.
“The only other thing I can think of saying is life is precious and it could be gone at any moment even when you think you are safe and secure in your bed,” Hamilton said.
“I hope I never, ever take it for granted again.”
As far as the hole in her home, Hamilton said she hopes her insurance policy can handle space debris.