Meteorite strikes car

Meteorite strikes are not rare events: an estimated 500 of them, sized less than 33 feet, strike the ground each year. Still, because most of the earth is water, uninhabited by humans, and because the meteorites are quite small, odds are fairly good the strikes are never recorded. But not all, and every so often a story emerges of a spectacularly lucky (or unlucky) individual who beats the odds and encounters a falling rock on their roof, or head (it happens), or, as in the case of Michelle Knapp, the trunk of a red 1980 Chevy Malibu innocently parked in the driveway.

On this day, October 9, in 1992, a bowling-ball sized chunk of rock from a 27-pound meteoroid that formed some 32 million years ago, flew through space and broke up into 70 pieces in the Earth’s atmosphere before piercing Michelle Knapp’s car.

The police first impounded the offending rock, and scientists took it apart later for study, but Knapp was still stuck with a damaged car. Rather than have it repaired, she decided to make lemonade out of lemons, and took the Malibu, dented but undaunted, to a worldwide tour as the only car to survive a meteorite strike.