On this day in Alabama history: Meteorite struck Oak Grove’s Ann Hodges

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Ann Hodges
Hewlett and Ann E. Hodges stand with a police officer in the living room of their home near Sylacauga in Talladega County. The hole in the ceiling above them was made by a meteorite that crashed through the roof of the house on November 30, 1954. [Photo Credit: From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of University of Alabama Museums]

November 30, 1954

Oak Grove resident Ann Hodges became the only person in recorded history to suffer a confirmed meteorite strike. The softball-sized meteorite crashed through Hodges’s roof and bounced off a radio before hitting her in the hip as she napped on her living-room couch. The impact left a sizeable bruise but no lasting damage. The event quickly became a national media sensation and resulted in a year-long legal battle between Hodges and her landlord over ownership of the rock. Hodges eventually donated the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa, where it remains today.

Republished with permission from the Alabama NewsCenter.

Rosa Hall, of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, displays a fragment of the Hodges meteorite. The entire meteorite struck Sylacauga resident Ann E. Hodges on the leg when it crashed through the roof of her house in 1954. [Photo Credit: From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photograph by Charles Nesbitt, courtesy of The Birmingham News]