Glasgow celebrates the bicentenary of the first confirmed meteor fall in Scotland on Monday 5 April at the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow.

Two hundred years ago, on the morning of the 5 April 1804, a series of bangs were heard between Falkirk and Glasgow. At a quarry near High Possil, on the northern outskirts of Glasgow, a smoking trail crashed into the ground with a loud thud, alarming the men working there, as well as many other witnesses, including two small boys and a dog.

The quarrymen found a hole about 18 inches deep and 15 inches wide, and at the bottom of it, a black rock, which they threw aside, as they had been expecting to find a cannonball. Later a party of professors from the University of Glasgow, together with the landowner, interviewed the witnesses, and recovered parts of the stone.

It was subsequently examined by scientists in Scotland and England, and was the subject of a great deal of interest. Until this time, scientists were unclear as to whether the reported falls of meteorites were true, mere superstition, or involved thunderstorms or other weather phenomena. Falls in Yorkshire in 1795, L'Aigle in France in 1803, and High Possil in 1804 were the first to be scientifically verified. The High Possil meteorite is important as one of the first proven falls anywhere.

In 1810, Miss Crawford, the owner of the land at the time, gave the biggest bit of the meteorite to the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow. The Hunterian is Scotland's oldest public museum, having opened in 1807.

This was the first confirmed meteorite fall in Scotland, and is still one of only four recovered here. The last recovered fall was at Strathmore in Perthshire in 1917. Statistically, we are probably overdue another one!

To celebrate the bicentenary, the Hunterian Museum is redisplaying the meteorite. It will be on improved display in a new case from 2 April 2004. A series of 10-minute meteorite related talks will take place in the museum at 12:45 on Tuesdays throughout April.

Media Relations Office (media@gla.ac.uk)

For further information contact: John Faithfull 0141-330-4213 For images contact: Harriet Gaston, 0141-330-3310. Or contact Mike Findlay at the University Press Office on 0141 330-8593.

Some meteorite facts? Meteorites are stones from space. Before they crash into the planet Earth, meteorites were bits of rock floating around in space between the planets.

A few very rare meteorites have come from other planets, especially the Moon, and Mars. They were probably knocked off by giant meteorite impacts, or volcanoes, and flew off into space, later to crash into the Earth.

Around 100 tons of meteorites land on the Earth every day, but almost all of these are invisibly-small, dust-sized grains which nobody notices. Even then, only a fifth of a gram would land on each square kilometre. Also two-thirds of the Earth is ocean, so most fall in the sea and sink out of sight.

Large meteorites, say bigger than a golf-ball, are quite scarce. A few thousand land every year on Earth, which may sound a lot, but most land in the sea, or in uninhabited areas. Only 20 or 30 meteorite new falls are found each year.

First published: 30 March 2004