100 Years Ago Today

A fireball streaking across the sky and a massive explosion in the Siberian hinterlands marks the largest recorded collision ever between Earth and an object from space.


The Tunguska event flattened 80 million trees covering 830 square miles of sparsely populated (but not unpopulated) Russian outback in the region of the Tunguska River northwest of Lake Baikal.

In its 1966 edition, the Guinness Book of Records concluded that, based on the Earth's rotation, had the Tunguska meteorite struck 4 hours, 47 minutes later, it would have obliterated St. Petersburg, then the capital of imperial Russia. Given the events that would shortly torment that nation -- and all of Europe -- for the better part of the 20th century, one is left to wonder how history might have changed in those circumstances.

Read more on the Tunguska Event on Wikipedia