Communication challenges during the French Revolution contributed to French scientists’ belated acceptance that rocks periodically fall from the sky. Acceptance in the New World was more belated still. When a meteorite shower occurred over the town of Weston, Connecticut on December 14, 1807, many American scientists dismissed the idea and anyone who suggested otherwise was branded a heretic. Following the l’Aigle meteorite event of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson, a scientist, wrote to his friend Andrew Ellicott “I find nothing surprising about the rain of stones in France. The reason is the exuberant imagination of a Frenchman gives him greater facility of writing, and he runs away with his judgment unless he has a good stock of it.  It even creates facts for him which never happened, and he tells them with good faith.”  Upon being learning of the Weston event by two Yale professors who published their findings, President Jefferson reputedly responded, “I would more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven,” Now offered is a select partial slice of what is among the most historic American meteorites.

23 x 27 x 1mm (1 x 1 x 0.1 in.) and 2.88 grams (14 carats)

Provenance: Macovich Collection of Meteorites, NYC

Estimate: $750 – 1,250 * Reserve: $750