By RAY KELLY
The last time a meteor strike in Mercer County, New Jersey, made headlines was 85 years ago and it involved an infamous radio show and certain actor-director.
But scientists and police are quite sure the mysterious 4-by 6-inch black rock that tore into a Hopewell Township home was just an ordinary 4 billion year old meteorite and not the vanguard of a Martian invasion. Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast opened with the report of a meteor strike in Grovers Mill, which is just 16 miles southeast of Hopewell.
The radio announcer on October 30, 1938 told Columbia Broadcasting System listeners:
“Now, nearer home, comes a special announcement from Trenton, New Jersey. It is reported that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton. The flash in the sky was visible within a radius of several hundred miles and the noise of the impact was heard as far north as Elizabeth.”
As the radio broadcast continues, the Grovers Mill meteorite turns out to be a spaceship that incinerates the townsfolk, media and military.
But that clearly was not the case this time, according to the local CBS affiliate and law enforcement.
The Hopewell Police Department reported on May 8, 2023 that a “metallic object believed to be a meteorite” struck the roof of a home on Old Washington Crossing Pennington Road. The oblong object went through the roof and ceiling of the ranch home before it “impacted the hardwood floor.”
Suzy Kop, a resident of the home, told CBS Philadelphia that the meteorite, which was still warm when discovered, landed in her father’s bedroom, but no one was home at the time. “I thank God that my father was not here, no one was here, we weren’t hurt or anything.”
Scientists with The College of New Jersey, working with Jerry Delaney, a retired meteorite expert from Rutgers University and the American Museum of Natural History, determined the object, which weighs about 2.2 pounds, is a rare stony chondrite meteorite. They came to that conclusion after conducting a visual examination, making density measurements and scanning electron microscope images.
No Martians.
(Thanks to Sally Condino-Kelly and Jim Kinney, who saw the humor in the proximity of the meteor strike.)
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