14. “Stones Fell Like Rain”
Contemporary Chinese records described the 1490 Meteor Shower: “Stones fell like rain in the Ch’ing-yang district. The larger ones were [about 3.5 pounds], and the smaller ones were [about 2 pounds]. Numerous stones rained in Ch’ing-yang. Their sizes were all different. The larger ones were like goose’s eggs and the smaller ones were like water chestnuts. More than 10,000 people were struck dead. All of the people in the city fled to other places.”
There are similarities between Chinese source descriptions of the 1490 event and what is known of the 1908 Tunguska Event. In 1908, an air burst of a meteoroid at an altitude of five miles above a sparsely populated part of Siberia flattened 770 square miles of forest. So it is probable that the 1490 Ch’ing Yang meteor shower was also caused by the disintegration of an asteroid in an air burst during atmospheric entry.