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Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies

Athens

Athens is an ordinary (LL6) chondrite that fell the morning of July 11, 1933, in Limestone County, Alabama. Only one stone, weighing approximately 265 g., was recovered.

According to C.C. Wylie and Stuart H. Perry, who described the Athens fall in great detail in volume 41 of Popular Astronomy (1933), a farmer and his son were alerted to the incoming meteorite by a loud humming noise “like an airplane flying high”.  The meteorite fell within 30 feet of them and, based on the sound of the impact, the son expected to find something weighing 100 lbs.  Instead, he found a small, dark stone, weighing only 9 oz, at the bottom of a 5-inch hole.

Wylie, CC and Perry, SH. (1933) The Athens meteor and meteorite. Popular Astronomy. 41, 468.