Cool

We don’t need no stinkin’ meteors, we can do it ourselves! Let’s gooo!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

According to astronomers, this stellar show — peaking Wednesday night — could produce up to 150 “shooting stars” per hour in white, yellow and even green hues.

Eyewitnesses claimed the air was filled with brilliant “snowflakes,” while newspapers dubbed it “the shower of stars.” In oral histories, Native American tribes referred to it as “the night the stars fell.”

The brightness of the shower caused countless citizens to rise from their slumber, in turn waking neighbors with loud exclamations of the vivid sight before them.

“I arose, and to my great joy, beheld the stars fall from heaven like a shower of hail stones; a literal fulfillment of the word of God as recorded in the holy scriptures as a sure sign that the coming of Christ is close at hand.”

While traveling across South America in 1799, the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt witnessed the display, recording, “Thousands of fireballs and falling stars fell in a row for four hours, often with a brightness like Jupiter.

Waggoner knew no artwork could truly do justice to the incredible spectacle he had witnessed, writing in the magazine accompanying the illustration, “Any representation on paper must at best give a very limited idea of the reality.”

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