What are the odds that you'll ever be hit by a meteor? Pretty darn small, since most burn up completely in the atmosphere, and there are very few accounts of meteorites coming near people. But those few accounts do exist.
On June 21, 1994, a Spanish man by the name of Jose Martin was out for a drive with his wife when he got definitive proof that the Universe doesn’t like him, or, at least, doesn’t like his car. How? Well, it dropped a nearly 2 kilo hunk of space rock that just moments ago had been travelling at several thousand miles per hour through his windshield….
Fortunately for Martin and his wife, the meteorite hit the dashboard instead of them and then ricocheted into the backseat. Amazingly, the only significant injury to the humans present was nothing more than a broken finger suffered by Martin- an injury we speculate he sustained while flipping off the sky as hard as humanly possible.
While the damage can be horrific, the upside of a meteorite encounter is that you might be able to sell the rock for a pretty penny. Martin wasn't the only one to have his car ruined by a meteorite, nor the only one to be injured by one. Read stories of other people who came too close for comfort at Today I Found Out.
(Image credit: Joachim Huber)