Dr. Nagy I. Zoltán szerk.: Fragmenta Mineralogica Et Palaentologica 6. 1975. (Budapest, 1975)
cher at the Gymnasium at Ungvár. Their correspondence has been described by A. VENDL (VENDL 1960) and is mentioned by E. VADÁSZ as well (VADÁSZ 1967). From the testimonies of witnesses it appeared, that on June 9-th 1866. about 05 p.m. Knahirta has been hit by an actual shower of meteorites. More than thousand stone fragments were falling from outer space. Their total weight reached almost one-half of a ton. However, when DUMA finally succeeded on June 29-th, to obtain "on a very serious request the permission from the head of his school for investigating this famous phenomenon", only 31 samples could be secured. The diligent and successful work of DUMA has been rewarded by the Academy of Sciences with a sum of 150 Guldens. Later the efforts to obtaining further specimens were rather unsuccessful ones, as only a few number of them could be secured from the village inhabitants. The success of this collection "was strongly impeded by the activities of the owners of some antiquity shops extablished in the neighbouring towns who were offering six to ten times higher prices for a piece of meteoric matter as compared to the prices determined by the Hungarian National Museum. The shopkeepers sold the greater part of the specimens collected by them on the markets of foreign countries (VENDL 1960). From protocols taken officially at the site, it appeared that people in the vicinity of the spot where the bolide was hitting the ground "felt distinctly the tremor of the earth and the vibration of house walls and windows (e.g. at Nagy-Berezna) was stronger than that observed at the time of a lightning stroke" (SZABO 1968). In hitting the ground, the two biggest fragments penetrated deeply into the soil: the one, transported to Vienna, having a weight of 294 kgs, penetrated to a deth of 11 feet (3, 5 metres) and after penetration they filled up the hole themselves. However, even the smaller fragments were penetrating to such depths that they could bye secured only upon fastidious searching. According to Szabó about 1200 fragments were certainly collected however the total number of fragments has been estimated to be about 1700 (TOKODY M. D. VENDL 1951). It should be mentioned that the meteoric fragment of 294 kgs (Fig. 3) is constituting not only the biggest specimen in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Vienna but at the time (1866) it was also the biggest among all the meteorites in the museums of the world and even now it is occupying the third place (Fig. 4.) among stony meteorites. The fragment of 41, 26 kgs, purchased by the Hungarian Natural History Museum from certain people in Ungvár for 750 Guldens and exhibited in the great hall of the Museum, was at the time the fourth biggest one among all the meteorites in the museums of the worlds,and hundred years later, about 1963 it was the sixth one (Fig. 4). During a further trip, SZABÓ visited the sites where the greater fragments hitted the ground and verified in the clayey soil the penetration channels. Their slopes, controlled with a compass, proved to be of a "true West-toEast direction, in complete agreement to the path direction of the firy meteor".The exploding "bomb from the sky" arriving under a higher slope angle, scattered "the soft, thick lawn in an elliptical (pattern) in a manner that the remains of the grass were found in an eastern direction from the hole at a distance of 20 to 40 steps (that is 15 to 30 metres) and even at a distance of 120 steps (90 metres) while, on the western side of the hole, no such remains were founds" .
