Nantan High Metal Meteorite Space Rock (1516)

Description

High-metal fragments of the famous Nantan Meteorite. These are not the usual highly-weathered specimens, but much more stable samples. The Nantan meteorite fall is one of the very rare witnessed iron meteorite falls on Earth. It fell from the northwest and landed in the city of Nantan, Nandan County, Guangxi Province, China in May of 1516 during the reign of Chinese emperor Zhendge. It was said to have been like “falling stars as bright as lightning that waved like snakes & dragons and then disappeared in a few seconds”. Centuries passed with no further record until 1958, during the severe steel shortage of chairman Mao Tsetung’s “Great Leap Forward” program when even the local farmer’s cooking pots were melted down to produce steel, when some farmers at Nantan suddenly discovered heavy iron rich rocks that they were unable to melt. Government investigators arrived and determined the “iron ore” to be meteorites!