This ought to make your day look a whole lot better:

Terrible Luck: The Only Person Ever Killed by a Meteorite — Back in 1888

by Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today via Phys.org / April 30, 2020

Researchers combing through the dusty archives from the Republic of Turkey found credible records of someone being killed by a falling meteorite in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. On August 22, 1888, multiple documents found in the General Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey recorded that a meteorite hit and killed one man while paralyzing another.

The reason this event had not been discovered until now is that the documents were written in an old Ottoman-Turkish language which borrows from both Arabic and Persian and is extremely hard to translate.

Using a word-by-word translation method where they first translated documents into Turkish and then English, researchers Ozan Unsalan and Altay Bayatl from Turkey and meteorite expert Peter Jenniskens from the US found three separate letters describing the incident.

The documents, written by local authorities and sent to the government, described “a strong bright light was accompanied by smoke and traveled toward a village.” The translation went on to say that meteorites fell for a period of about ten minutes “like rain.” As an unfortunate consequence, one man was killed and the other was seriously injured. Also, crops were damaged in a manner consistent with a fireball shockwave, the researchers determined.

But more importantly, the letters reported that meteorites were found on a hill near the village. The documents seemingly indicated—although the translation was not clear—that perhaps specimens of the meteorites were sent to the local government. But no further documentation of any specimens has been found so far.

There are numerous times in history where people have been injured and property damaged by meteoritic falls. The famous Tunguska event in Russia in 1908 flattened trees for miles. In 2013, an asteroid impact near Chelyabinsk, Russia took place and over 1,600 people reported to the hospital for injuries, while building were damaged from the airburst shock wave. And back in 1954, a woman named Ann Hodges was hit by a space rock when it fell through her roof and injured her hip. There were reports of a man killed in India in 2016, initially claimed to be from an airburst, but it was later ruled to from be an explosion with an Earthly origin.

Now, the heck with Borisov, I kinda want to hear more about that last case.

Apparently, memes have become sentient, and can generate themselves.

Per Rihar:

Random Meme Generator

Someone found this for me. Sometimes unintentionally funny, mostly just confusing enough to get an uncomfortable laugh out of your friends.

I sampled it. It’s spooky.

It’s also going to put us all out of business.

Only the text-based and the clever (Like Frnak) will stand out.

But, as Mao said, the plants that grow the tallest are the ones most easily cut down. Or something.