In the pre-dawn hours of November 12, 1833, the sky
over North America seemed to explode with falling
stars. Unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and
visible over the entire continent, an Illinois
newspaper reported “the very heavens seemed ablaze.” An
Alabama newspaper described “thousands of luminous
bodies shooting across the firmament in every
direction.” Observers in Boston estimated that there
were over 72,000 “falling stars” visible per hour
during the remarkable celestial storm.
The Lakota people were so amazed by the event that they
reset their calendar to commemorate it. Joseph Smith,
traveling with Mormon refugees, noted in his diary that
it was surely a sign of the Second Coming. Abraham
Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, among
many others, described seeing it. It became known as
“The Night the Stars Fell.”
So, what was this amazing occurrence?
Many of those who witnessed it interpreted it as a sign
of the Biblical end times, remembering words from the
gospel of St. Mark: “And the stars of heaven shall
fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be
shaken.” But Yale astronomer Denison Olmsted sought a
scientific explanation, and shortly afterwards he
issued a call to the public—perhaps the first
scientific crowd-sourced data gathering effort. At
Olmsted’s request, newspapers across the country
printed his call for data: “As the cause of ‘Falling
Stars’ is not understood by meteorologists, it is
desirable to collect all the facts attending this
phenomenon, stated with as much precision as possible.
The subscriber, therefore, requests to be informed of
any particulars which were observed by others,
respecting the time when it was first discovered, the
position of the radiant point above mentioned, whether
progressive or stationary, and of any other facts
relative to the meteors.”
Olmsted published his conclusions the following year,
the information he had received from lay observers
having helped him draw new scientific conclusions in
the study of meteors and meteor showers. He noted that
the shower radiated from a point in the constellation
Leo and speculated that it was caused by the earth
passing through a cloud of space dust. The event, and
the public’s fascination with it, caused a surge of
interest in “citizen science” and significantly
increased public scientific awareness.
Nowadays we know that every November the earth passes
through the debris in the trail of a comet known as
Tempel-Tuttle, causing the meteor showers we know as
the Leonids. Impressive every year, every 33 year or so
they are especially spectacular, although very rarely
attaining the magnificence of the 1833 event.
The Leonid meteor showers are ongoing now and are
expected to peak on November 18. But don’t expect a
show like the one in 1833. This year at its peak the
Leonids are expected to generate 15 “shooting stars”
per hour.
November 12, 1833, one hundred eighty-nine years ago
today, was “The Night the Stars Fell.”
The image is an 1889 depiction of the event.
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Marion Illinois History Preservation
https://www.mihp.org/2013/11/1833-the-night-the-sky-
fell/
1833, The Night the Sky Fell
Posted on November 23, 2013 by wcihs
Leonids-1833Even though Marion wasn’t officially in
existence until 1839, there were already a considerable
number of pioneer families occupying various locations
throughout Southern Illinois in 1833.
Events occur periodically that seem to “freeze moments
in time” and ever after serve as markers for every
other event in one’s life. An example, for us today,
would be the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963
or the events of 9/11/2001. To the very, early pioneer
settlers in this section of the U.S., two of those
markers would have been the New Madrid earthquake of
December of 1811 through February of 1812, for those
few pioneers that were around, or, for the next wave of
pioneers, the memorable event was the night the sky
fell in 1833.
Keep in mind that this event occurred in a time when
there was absolutely no artificial lighting, save oil
lamps and campfires, to blot out the night skies and
also occurred in November when the air is cooler, drier
and therefore, more transparent.
Over a three-night span from November 10th through
November 12th, 1833, people witnessed what is still
considered to be the greatest astronomical spectacle in
recorded history. It was November 11th and 12th of that
year when countless meteors shot across the night sky,
catching many people’s attention and interest. People
knelt down and prayed or flocked to churches, thinking
that the Day of Judgment was at hand.
Agnes Clerke, an early Victorian astronomy writer
recorded a firsthand account of the event, “On the
night of November 12-13, 1833, a tempest of falling
stars broke over the Earth… The sky was scored in every
direction with shining tracks and illuminated with
majestic fireballs. At Boston, the frequency of meteors
was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow
in an average snowstorm. Their numbers… were quite
beyond counting; but as it waned, a reckoning was
attempted, from which it was computed, on the basis of
that much-diminished rate, that 240,000 must have been
visible during the nine hours they continued to fall.”
Just like the New Madrid earthquake of 1811, this event
was so far out of the belief system of understanding
that most thought that it was “judgment day”, the end
of the world.
This was confirmed by an article appearing in the
Egyptian Press newspaper published in Marion on October
8, 1898, “Mrs. Susan Norman and John Klope… live about
4 miles east of Marion… Tennessee is their native
state, where they were born 12 Aug 1823 and where they
lived at the time of the meteoric phenomenon or “shower
of stars” in 1833, which they well remember as
frightening many people almost to death with the belief
that the world was coming to an end.”
John W. Allen’s book “Legends and Lore of Southern
Illinois” records the event in the following.
“An interesting story is brought to mind by a broken
(grave) marker in an unprotected cemetery located on a
farm between the site of Jordan’s Brothers’ Fort or
blockhouse, about three miles south and one east of
Thompsonville and historic Bethel Church. This burying
ground, perhaps the oldest one in Franklin County, has
long been deserted and there is no indication that a
burial has been made there within a lifetime.
Only one marker that memorializes a soldier who served
in one of the earlier wars is left standing. Many are
broken and hogs have rooted the pieces about; some have
gone into the branch that flows beside the plot.
One of the fallen and broken stones carries the
inscription, “Z. Mitchell Died November 13, 1833.”
Zadoc, for that was his first name, was an early
settler in the vicinity. So far as records and
traditions indicate, he was a substantial and exemplary
citizen leading a rather quiet and uneventful life. He
would doubtless be entirely forgotten had not the time
of his death coincided with a most spectacular show of
meteorites that came on “the night he lay a corpse.”
No one knew that literally hundreds of “falling stars”
would appear. They understood little of the principals
involved, but it was an awe-inspiring sight. The
loneliness of the thinly settled Illinois country, the
natural grief at the loss of an esteemed neighbor, and
the general air of solemnity coupled with the dead
helped to make the meteoric shower even more impressive
in Franklin County.
Neighbors going to pay their respects to the deceased
man or to “set up with the corpse” on that November
night in 1833, were greatly impressed with the fiery
flashes and traces left by the speeding meteorites.
“The night that Zadoc Mitchell lay a corpse” and “the
night the stars fell” thus became inseparably
connected.
For many years after his death, one had only to mention
the name of Zadoc Mitchell and the response would be,
“He lay a corpse the night the stars fell.” If allusion
was made to the meteoric shower, the response would be,
“That was the night Zadoc Mitchell lay a corpse.” They
were much like the method used to designate time in the
South in relation to the Civil War, when the
expressions “befo’ de wah” and “afta’ da wah” were
commonly used to date events”
All of our ancestors who were alive during this period
of time anywhere in North America east of the Rockies
would have been acutely aware of and impacted by this
event. How it affected them is anyone’s guess, but for
the most part, I am willing to bet it scared the tar
out of them and at the very least, I’m sure they didn’t
forget it anytime soon.
Leonid Meteor Shower Facts
The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or
storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of
the superlative storm of 1833 and the recent
developments in scientific thought of the time the
Leonids have had a major effect on the development of
the scientific study of meteors which had previously
been thought to be atmospheric phenomena.
The meteor storm of 1833 was of truly superlative
strength. One estimate is over one hundred thousand
meteors an hour, but another, done as the storm abated,
estimated in excess of two hundred thousand meteors an
hour over the entire region of North America east of
the Rocky Mountains. It was marked by the Native
Americans, abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, Frederick
Douglass and others.
Near Independence, Missouri, it was taken as a sign to
push the growing Mormon community out of the area. The
founder and first leader of Mormonism, Joseph Smith,
noted in his journal that this event was a literal
fulfillment of the word of God and a sure sign that the
coming of Christ is close at hand.
Denison Olmsted explained the event most accurately.
After spending the last weeks of 1833 collecting
information he presented his findings in January 1834
to the American Journal of Science and Arts, published
in January–April 1834, and January 1836. He noted the
shower was of short duration and was not seen in
Europe, and that the meteors radiated from a point in
the constellation of Leo and he speculated the meteors
had originated from a cloud of particles in space.
Accounts of the 1866 repeat of the Leonids counted
hundreds per minute/a few thousand per hr in Europe.
The Leonids were again seen in 1867, when moonlight
reduced the rates to 1000 per hour. Another strong
appearance of the Leonids in 1868 reached an intensity
of 1000 per hour in dark skies. It was in 1866–67 that
information on Comet Tempel-Tuttle was gathered
pointing it out as the source of the meteor shower.
When the storms failed to return in 1899, it was
generally thought that the dust had moved on and storms
were a thing of the past.
The Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with
the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name
from the location of their radiant in the constellation
Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in
the sky. They peak in the month of November.
Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles
left from the passages of a comet. The stream comprises
solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the
comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of
the Sun when it is close enough – typically closer than
Jupiter’s orbit. The Leonids are a fast moving stream
which encounter the path of Earth and impact at 72
km/s. Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm across have
a mass of half a gram and are known for generating
bright (apparent magnitude -1.5) meteors. An annual
Leonid shower may deposit 12 or 13 tons of particles
across the entire planet.
Back to the top
(Data extracted from “Legends and Lore of Southern
Illinois” by John W. Allen; Egyptian Press article
dated October 8, 1898; Wikipedia; compiled by Sam
Lattuca on 11/23/2013)
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