The Meteor Shower That Killed 10,000 People [19:18]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai follows.

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https://search.brave.com/search?q=Comet+C-1490+Y1&summary=1

Comet C/1490 Y1 is a historically significant comet first observed in December 1490 by astronomers in China, Korea, and Japan. It was recorded in East Asian chronicles, including the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, and is believed to be the parent body of the Quadrantid meteor shower, one of the most intense annual meteor showers, visible each January.

Historical Event: The Qingyang Event
In March or April 1490, a massive meteor air burst occurred near Qingyang (modern-day Gansu Province, China), described in Chinese records as “stones fell like rain.”
Reports estimate 10,000 to tens of thousands of fatalities, though the official History of Ming omits casualty numbers.
The timing coincides with the appearance of C/1490 Y1, leading to speculation that the comet’s debris may have caused the event.
Note: While the JPL Small-Body Database classifies C/1490 Y1 as a near-parabolic or non-periodic comet (e=1.0), multiple independent studies conclude it was a periodic comet with a stable orbit, strongly supporting its link to the Quadrantid meteor shower.

AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.

Transcript
The year was 1490. The location, Qingyang, China. It was a spring evening in this central Chinese city when something strange began to occur in the sky above. For one, there was a recently discovered comet that was coming into view: Comet C-1490 Y1. But this comet pales in comparison to the really strange event that was about to occur.

As residents were going about their evenings, a massive stone fell high from the sky above and smashed into the street below. Onlookers ran over to check out the scene, but only a few moments later, another stone fell on a roof nearby. Then, within a matter of minutes, stones began to rain all over the city from above. They rammed into fields, smashed into houses, and people began to run for their lives. According to witness testimony, there were over 100,000 stones falling from the sky. 100,000. That's an insane number.

One surviving account stated this: "Stones fell like rain in the Qingyang district. The larger ones were four to five caddies, about 1.5 kg, and the smaller ones were two to three caddies, about 1 kilogram." Numerous stones rained in Qingyang. Their sizes were all different. The larger ones were like goose eggs, and the smaller ones were like water chestnuts. More than 10,000 people were struck dead. 10,000 people struck dead. That's an insane number. Uh, that would make this event one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

And here's the thing, all right, this event definitely happened. How do we know this? Well, China has always been really good at keeping historic records, and there are over 10 different sources that talk about this event. Now, not all of them claim that 10,000 plus people died, but either way, this event definitely occurred. So, the question is, what the heck happened? Like, what is going on? What caused these stones to fall from above over the city of Qingyang? Are there any remnants from this event? And are there any other similar events throughout history? These are the questions we seek to find answers to in today's video. Let's get into it.
Theories on the Event
So, there are a few theories on what occurred over Qingyang, China in 1490, but perhaps the most popular is a meteor air burst. A meteor, perhaps you've heard of a meteor, it's often called a shooting star or a falling star, is a rock that originates up in space, often called a meteoroid, or if it's larger, an asteroid, or maybe even a comet, flying through the atmosphere and then disintegrating, releasing a ton of energy in a process known as ablation. And when this energy is released, it creates a streak in the sky. It emits light because all that energy, it's, you know, it's a lot of energy.

Now, if this meteor is significantly large, if it's even a small asteroid, the ablation process can sometimes make these things explode. When these meteors, when these stones blow up, explode in our atmosphere, they're called meteor air bursts. Overall, these are pretty rare events, but they do tend to occur once a decade, usually over the ocean. One of the most famous and one of the most recent meteor air bursts occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013. On February 15th, 2013, a 20-meter wide rock in space entered the atmosphere and blew up. Here is footage of that event.

You see this part right here? This little explosion, that is a meteor air burst. Here's what's crazy. This explosion, this air burst released 500 kilotons of TNT. That's a lot. That's equivalent to a pretty large nuclear bomb. In fact, it's equivalent to this.

[Music]

The shock wave from this explosion actually damaged over 7,000 buildings and sent many people to the hospital because the glass went into their eyes and yeah, it was not good. But we're not talking about explosions. We're talking about rocks raining down on a specific area. Well, that also occurred further down the path. Now, here's the path of the Chelyabinsk meteor. As you can see, this area right here is where the air burst occurred. And then there were several smaller air bursts after the fact. But this right here, this little area, this is where a bunch of stones, a bunch of rocks from the meteor rained down from above. This is known as a strewn field.

Now, interestingly, the main meteoroid from the Chelyabinsk meteor actually ended up in this frozen lake way over here. This was the largest piece and it's known as the Chelyabinsk meteorite. But going back to where all the stones impacted the ground over here, it may look like a lot, but in reality, only about a thousand small pieces were recovered. This event actually occurred after it had recently snowed. So, it was pretty easy to find these little fragments. Kids would often see snow banks with holes in them, and then they would dig down through the hole and find the meteor.

Now, while there were some casualties, there were some injuries from the Chelyabinsk meteor, there were none reported from falling stones. So, how on earth do we get to that insane 10,000 fatalities, 100,000 plus stones raining down that we saw in China in 1490? Well, another meteor air burst, the Tunguska event that occurred over Siberia in 1908 could have easily caused 10,000 fatalities had it occurred over a populated area. This meteor air burst was massive. In fact, it's believed that the explosion was equivalent to 10 to 50 megatons, making it equivalent to some of the largest nuclear bombs ever detonated. Something similar to this.

Just as a reference, here's the Tunguska meteoroid compared to the Chelyabinsk meteoroid. Quite a bit larger. Thankfully, the Tunguska event occurred over an extremely remote area where there was no one around at all. In fact, it wasn't even discovered for quite a while after it had happened. However, there are some who believe that three may have been killed from this event. But had this event occurred over a city like Qingyang, China, it could have definitely killed 10,000, 20,000 plus people.

But here's one of the strange conundrums of the Tunguska event. You see, while there was a huge explosion that occurred, no one has ever been able to recover any actual fragments from the asteroid itself. And this is one of the strange things about it that has a lot of skeptics saying, "Oh, it could have been a different event. Maybe it wasn't a meteor air burst. Maybe it was caused by aliens or something." One possible explanation is that this could have been caused by a small comet. You see, comets, unlike asteroids, they have a lot of ice. They have a lot of smaller, you know, dusty things built inside. A comet could have completely vaporized, leaving no trace. At least in theory.

There is some evidence that actually supports this. In Eurasia around the time of the Tunguska event, there were several people who witnessed sky glows or glowing skies in the evenings after the impact. This could possibly be explained by, you know, little dust fragments, little ice crystal fragment dust things in our atmosphere. Pretty interesting. Kind of like noctilucent clouds.
Another Example of a Meteor Air Burst
Now, there's one example of a meteor air burst that occurred in the United States in Tilden, Illinois on July 13th, 1927. Now, this event to me is very intriguing. This would have been such a sweet thing to have witnessed. Okay, so apparently around 1:00 p.m. on July 13th, 1927, people around the area of Tilden, Illinois suddenly saw a huge bright meteor tearing through the sky. And it was up there for a while. And people stated it sounded like an airplane, like there was a hum as it flew through the sky. It then exploded on three different occasions. These explosions were described as being green and purple and they were pretty big. They shook all the houses down below.

But what's interesting about this story is the fragments. So the fragments from these explosions from the meteor were seen impacting the earth. Like people witnessed them hitting the earth. Apparently when they looked up it kind of looked like a black mist falling in the sky. They couldn't see individual pieces, but they just saw like this black orb thing, which was just a bunch of smaller pieces flying into the ground. Maybe a similar look to a contrail shadow like this.

Now, what's really cool is people who had witnessed these little black fragments flying through the sky, they also described a strange shrieking noise, like a, I don't know, like they could hear these rocks flying through the sky, which is crazy. And then after the shrieking, they could also hear the larger fragments impacting the ground, and they described it as a thud. Boom.
Meteor Air Bursts and the Qingyang Event
I want to, I don't want to witness this, but I do. That's just what an incredible thing to see. One eyewitness report from a local resident named Alan Rainey said this: I was sitting on my front porch after dinner yesterday when I was attracted by a rushing sound seemingly coming from a great tide above. The noise grew louder and sounded to me like the humming sound made by the propeller of an airplane. The sound grew steadily louder until it seemed directly overhead. I got up from my chair and started to investigate when suddenly there came the report of a terrific explosion high overhead in the sky. Then another and another.

As I walked off the porch, I heard a distinct shriek overhead and, peering into the sky in the direction where the sound came from, I saw something resembling a streak of lightning descending toward the earth, followed immediately by a puff of fuzz on the ground about 100 yards north of my neighbor John Stone's house. Curious, I walked over to the place where I saw the object fall and to my astonishment discovered a wedged-shaped piece of what appeared to be rock embedded about a foot in the earth. I looked at it for a while, then cautiously touched it with my finger and found it was cold, much colder to the touch than any ordinary material of its kind found lying on the ground. In fact, it felt as if it had just come out of the refrigerator.

So, a little interesting side note, in case you didn't know, sometimes, and I'm not convinced always, but sometimes meteorites, when they hit the ground, if you find it right after the event, they're ice cold. Why is this? Well, space is pretty cold. Not always, but a lot of space is very cold. And these rocks, you know, they were in space for billions of years, a long time. Their cores are super cold. So when they go through the atmosphere, even though they're kind of blowing up and getting super hot, only the outer layer is getting super hot; the inner layers are still super cold. And if it's a specific type of meteorite, maybe an iron meteorite, by the time anyone comes over to touch it, it's going to feel cold to the touch because the outer layers would have cooled by the time that they actually got there, which is pretty cool. There's even been descriptions in history about meteorites with frost on them after they were discovered. That's how cold they were.

Now, what makes this event unique is that all the fragments were found within a two-mile radius. When we talked about the Chelyabinsk event from earlier, they were spread over a huge area, but during this event, they were all much more tightly condensed to just a 2-mile radius, and there were a ton of fragments. Of course, there were the larger fragments that people heard thuds of, but there are tons, thousands of smaller, tiny fragments that litter the ground below. This is similar to the 1490 Qingyang event because no one else reported any fragments anywhere in China. It was just over this city. So, the fact that it was confined to such a small area kind of gives evidence to the meteor air burst theory. But still, we're talking about tens of thousands of meteorites, way more than what was seen over Tilden, Illinois.

So, are there any meteor bursts that had a large amount of meteorites? And the answer to that is yes. The best example is the Ptusk meteor air burst that occurred on January 30th, 1868. So around 7:00 p.m. near the town of Ptusk in Poland, thousands of people witnessed a large explosion in the sky from a meteor. But what's unique about this is that, for some reason, this meteor air burst rained down thousands and thousands of stones. In fact, the estimated number of fragments that fell down from the sky is over 100,000. All these fragments fell within a 127 square km area or 78 square miles. Most of these stones ranged from small little gram pieces all the way up to 20 lb rocks. But by far, the vast majority of these fragments were pea-sized. This was obviously a unique event. Why did this one have so many different fragments? It probably has something to do with what this asteroid, this meteoroid was composed of before it entered the Earth's atmosphere.

By the way, this diagram right here shows the meteorite's composition. This specific event right here, the Ptusk meteor shower, is easily the closest thing to the Qingyang event of 1490. I mean, both accounts claimed that over 100,000 stones fell from the sky. In conclusion to meteor air bursts, the one thing that we have learned is that they come in a variety of different ways. Sometimes there's big explosions with no fragments, no stones, like the Tunguska event. Sometimes there's smaller explosions with a lot more stones. Sometimes stones are spread over a large area, and sometimes they're in a very small two-mile radius. The main reason for all the variety is that meteors are all kind of different. The speed at which they enter the atmosphere, the angle, the type of material that the meteoroid is made out of, all these different factors can create different scenarios.

So perhaps just a very unique event occurred over Qingyang, China in 1490 where all those stones came in that small area. But the problem with the meteor air burst theory is that no one ever reported any explosions. No one reported any sonic booms or lights in the sky. The only thing that they reported was thousands and thousands of stones falling from above. Which leads to the next theory: a legitimate meteor shower. Now, I've talked about meteor storms in the past. Meteor storms are like extreme examples of meteor showers. The Leonids, for example, in 1833 popped off and there were hundreds of thousands of shooting stars within a few hours. But these meteor storms are caused by clumps of smaller rocks that our Earth just happens to pass through. All right? So, in the case of the Leonids, we're going through a comet's debris tail. And if that debris tail is really fresh, then it could be very dense with a lot of small rocks. And then you go through it and then you get shooting stars all over the sky.

The issue is that most of these shooting stars, most of these meteors, they burn up way before any of the fragments can reach the surface. Now, I'm sure some fragments do reach the surface and they might be pretty small. So maybe no one really noticed them. Little chips and little debris, little dust, but with the 1490 Qingyang event, these were stones, some as large as goose eggs. So, how does a large stone like that survive entry through the atmosphere without creating a massive explosion like in a meteor air burst? It's kind of a bit of a mystery. Perhaps there was an explosion and just no one happened to mention it in any of the accounts, but I don't know why they wouldn't mention it. I mean, there are 10 plus accounts of this. You would think someone would mention an explosion in the sky.

But there is another theory that could explain this event which is not nearly as interesting but technically possible, and that is that this is all hail. We know that hail has a variety of sizes. You can have little pea-sized hail go all the way up to softball size and even larger gorilla hail. Hail is caused in thunderstorms when you have water droplets. You know how thunderstorms it rains and stuff and there's water in the air? Anyway, sometimes in larger thunderstorms and supercells even, you have updrafts and this water gets collected and goes way up into the atmosphere to the point where it freezes and then drops down to earth and then you get hail and it's like in the thousands. Like if you've ever seen a hail storm, it's crazy. Especially if you're in a home, if you're in a home and there's a hail storm, like even if it's like pea-sized, it sounds crazy. It sounds like... Anyway, that recently happened to me and the insurance did not approve my roof. Uh, anyways, that's a different story.

So, could it have been hail? Here's the other thing that supports the hail hypothesis: no stones have been recovered to this day from this event. If it rained down thousands, hundreds of thousands of stones from space, you would think that we would have been able to discover some of these fragments to this day. However, we have not. Now, it's possible that since this is in China and since there's a little bit of a, you know, political wall there, maybe there is research that has been done on this event and maybe there have been fragments found that we don't know about, but online there seems to be no evidence of these stones being discovered. Hail would explain this, but again, you would think that people would have mentioned the fact that it was hail. In all the accounts and all the records, no one mentions it being hail or ice that melted over time.

So, I'm going to tell you my theory. Okay. So, there's something known as a meteor burst. It's kind of like in between a meteor shower and a meteor storm. Up in space, there are asteroids. There are meteoroids. And due to tidal forces, sometimes they can break into smaller pieces, right? This happens to comets all the time. They go around the sun. I think comet ISON did this. It went around the sun and then it broke into a bunch of small little fragments. Okay? So, what I think is you kind of get a mix of a meteor air burst with a meteor burst in general. Just a bunch of fragments. I think that these fragments were quite a bit larger, but I don't think they were large enough to create huge explosions. It could have even been a rubble pile asteroid. These are celestial bodies in space that are essentially a bunch of small rocks, a bunch of small pieces of meteoroid gravel grouped together. A moving collection of rocks. And maybe one of these big collections of rocks went through our atmosphere and rained down stones below.

The thing is though, if any meteorite is going to hit the ground, you're going to see a streak in the sky regardless, or rather a bright flash. So to explain that, I think maybe it occurred during the day, maybe in the direction of the sun. And if it's over in the sun area, you're not going to see all those bright flashes because it's going to be blinded by the sun's light. Perhaps it was midday and all these stones came in from above and as far as anyone could tell, it was just raining stones on their city.

This is my explanation. I don't know. I think it's possible. Not 100% sure. Uh, let me know your thoughts in the comments below. I mean, what else could really explain it? I don't know. So, let me know. Anyways, with that said, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.

Unrelated courtesy sidebar: Pinellas County, Florida - Need Room ASAP - OUTDOOR Smoker! [02/28/2026]

back in the QingYang days in china just 2 years before Columbus got funding for his voyage to go there as he had heard of the mythical city that had invented what produced what was called the Gansu knife.

He traveled across europe and told the wealthy that they too could get these amazing knives which were famous for their razor-sharp, serrated edges that made slicing and dicing, from delicate tomatoes to toughest meat effortless and low-maintenance.

Some sets included chef, santoku, and steak knives designed to stay sharp forever even after being used to open the canned tomatoes or stabbing the odd ruffian.

Unknownst to poor Chris a giant meteor storm destroyed the city before he even got his funding. He never made it to QingYang and eventually everyone forgot the original reason he wanted to sail the ocean blue.

Then in the 1970s an enterprising archeologist uncovered a sample by accident, and tried to recreate the glory but he misspelled it as Ginsu and did not have gilded craftsmen reproduce this historical artifact, but instead stamped them with a machine in Ohio and sold them to american consumers on late night infomercials.

“The Odd Ruffian” would be a great nick.

that;s my dog’s name... Ruff Ruff lol

Didn’t anyone think to yell, ‘DUCK!’ ? ;)

This is obviously the fault of Global Warming. Or President Trump. Or my ICE SUV.

*SMIRK*

Thanks for posting! Sending this to my daughter who really enjoys things about comets;

Interestingly, the strike in Tilden Illinois is almost located along the 38th Parallel, where a an almost linear series of meteor strikes occurred. (And a volcano or two...Tilden is at 38.2 something.)

38th Parallel Structures

"The 38th parallel structures, also known as the 38th parallel lineament,[1] are a series of seven circular depressions or deformations stretching 700 kilometres (430 mi) across southern Illinois and Missouri and into eastern Kansas, in the United States, at a latitude of roughly 38 degrees north. Estimated at 300 million years old, three are believed to be impact events from meteorites, but other structures are possibly remnants of volcanos.

Here is additional Site for other impact craters within the U.S. Impact Craters U.S.

On the freeway bypass around Evansville, Indiana, there’s a marker to indicate the 38th parallel (put there in memory of the Korean War).

Earlier this century, there was a FR series of threads of a tracked asteroid that was to impact Earth over Africa. Those tracking with their telescopes calculated the area of Africa it would impact and the time frame of a couple of hours.

Notice to aircraft to watch for the asteroid and where flashes are witnessed. Pilots duly noted and reported the asteroid flashes.

A US university sent out a team of grad students to the area to search for pieces and they felt sure that they had collected most of all the meteorites from the desert surface.

The whole restaurant was, like, “I’ll have the duck”, and no one knew what it really meant. Then, kaboom!

I remember that now... search sez it was asteroid 2018 LA (ZLAF9B2), but the search specific to FR turned up nothin’.

Ah, there’s a keyword, how convenient!

https://freerepublic.com/tag/2018la/index?tab=articles

Or maybe it was...

https://freerepublic.com/tag/2008tc3/index?tab=articles

My pleasure, and thanks for that info as well!

I *thought* I had a file hiding on the drive, link or links about impact craters worldwide... hmm, nothin' turned up... oh, there's a "show all" at the bottom of the search list... alpha sort... there's the freakin' thing:

Mapping all 200 impact craters of the Earth Impact Database, Planetary and Space Science Centre:
200 Earth Impact Craters Mapped by Size and Age | 10:18
Geography Viz | 6.59K subscribers | 490,268 views | March 22, 2024

0:00 Intro
0:19 Carancas Crater
0:31 Haviland Crater
0:48 Kaali Crater
1:17 Douglas Crater
1:45 Boxhole, Aouelloul, Amguid, Monturaqui and Wolfe Creek craters
2:20 Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater)
3:28 Rotor Kamm Crater
3:40 New Quebec Crater
3:50 Gow Crater
4:17 Tin Bider Crater
4:28 Piccaninny Crater
4:42 Couture Crater
4:57 Connolly Crater
5:26 Spatial distribution of earth impact craters
5:57 Upheaval Dome Crater
6:10 Bosumtwi Crater
6:20 Gosses Bluff Crater
6:30 Haughton Crater
6:43 Ries Crater
6:53 Slate Islands Crater
7:03 Clearwater West Crater
7:14 Mjølnir Crater
7:33 Kara-Kul Crater
7:44 Manicouagan Crater
8:12 Sudbury Basin Crater
8:38 Chicxulub Crater
9:16 Vredefort Crater
9:54 Earth impact craters map

During my childhood in the 60s we had a dog, named it Thurston Howl. Every time I had to walk him, it seemed like a three hour tour.

2008 seems correct, but at least two FR threads are missing…one being the recovery by the US grad students, and another for the request of pilots to watch for flashes.