German teen struck by meteorite

See story here. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

ESSEN, Germany, June 12 (UPI) -- A German boy on his way to school has become the second known person to survive a direct strike by a meteorite, scientists say.

Gerrit Blank, 14, has a 3-inch scar where he was hit on the hand by a pea-sized rock that hurtled to earth at more than 30,000 miles an hour, The Daily Telegraph of London reported Friday.

"At first I saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand," Blank told the Telegraph. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder." . . .

The only other known case of a human surviving a meteor strike was in the United States in 1954 when a grapefruit-sized rock crashed through the roof of a home in Alabama and struck a sleeping woman.

Here too.

A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports. . . .