What fell from the sky on April 12, 2011 was certainly not a meteor. And yet if fell from the sky and smashed into a family’s home causing an estimated $20,000 in damages. The rock, which left a massive hole in the roof of the small family’s home and likely left them watching the skies a bit more, could have killed someone if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but luckily they were not home when it dropped in for a visit. So the question on everyone’s mind now is, where did it come from?
Cookeville Tennessee isn’t the sort of place you would expect a rock to fall from the sky and smash into a family’s home doing massive amounts of damage. Then again, there aren’t very many places on Earth you’d expect a mystery like this to unfold. But that’s precisely what happened. And it didn’t just fall through the roof. It actually smashed into a chair in the family’s home – a chair that they once spent long hours reading in.
The incident, according to local newspaper the Herald Citizen occurred during a brief period when the family had left the house sometime just before noon. When they returned they were unprepared for the shock that they found. The suspected culprit at the moment is the nearby quarry which has been known to fling rocks accidentally during excavating blasts. But nothing the size of this 50-lb monster has ever been launched anywhere near the distance reported on April 12. Still, it does seem the most plausible cause at the moment.
Of course plausible is a tricky word to use when you’re dealing with something like a massive rock flying through the air and falling into a family’s home. But it is also certainly not unheard of. In 1922 rocks fell from the sky over the small town of Chico, California. The rocks were said to have been falling from the sky for several weeks when the phenomenon finally reached the attention of the San Francisco Chronicle. The rocks falling were said to be from a meteor shower, a sudden dimensional portal, poltergeist activity, and alien intervention. The Lesotho Poltergeist of Africa was said to cause rocks to fall from the sky onto peoples’ roofs. It was later said to be a meteorite.
So what did the family do when they realized a mysterious 50-lb rock had fallen from the sky and landed into their lives? They did what most families would do – they felt relief that none of them were hurt by the incident and they started to rebuild.
And if the idea of this rock from the heavens seems like it’s easy to dismiss as a meteorite, it should be noted that a rock this size falling from space would have almost certainly caused a lot more damage than it did. And whatever its source, it will likely end up in the same place regardless. It will always have a place in our minds as evidence of just how strange our world can be – even if not all mysteries remain unexplainable.