I'm a researcher who's spent the last twelve years studying impact events. And there's one case that changed everything I thought I knew about what could fall from the sky. It happened on June 30th, 1908, in one of the most remote places on Earth. I need to tell you about what happened to a man named Sergei Simanov. He was a Russian settler living at a trading post called Vanavara, about forty miles south of where it happened. What he experienced that morning, what he reported seeing, it's stayed with me since I first read his testimony. I've been to that site twice now. I've walked that forest. And I believe every word he said.
It was a Tuesday morning. June 30th by the new calendar, though the Russians were still using the old calendar then, so they called it June 17th. Around seven fifteen in the morning. Sergei was sitting outside his house at the trading post, having breakfast, facing north. He suddenly saw the sky split in two. That's how he described it. The sky split in two, and fire appeared high and wide over the forest, about fifty degrees up from the horizon. The split in the sky grew larger. The entire northern side was covered with fire. That's what he told the expedition team in 1930, twenty-two years later. He said he could still see it clearly in his mind. And then the heat hit him. He said it felt like his shirt was on fire. Strong heat came from the north, where the fire was. He wanted to tear his shirt off and throw it down. But then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded. The shock wave threw him several meters. He lost consciousness for a moment. His wife had to run out and lead him back to the house.
After that came the noise. He described it as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing. The Earth shook beneath him. When he was on the ground, he pressed his head down, fearing rocks would smash it. The hot wind raced between the houses, leaving traces in the ground like pathways. It damaged some of the crops. Later they found many windows shattered, and in the barn, part of an iron lock had snapped. Sergei was forty miles away. Forty miles south of the epicenter. And it still knocked him off his feet. Closer to the event, two brothers from the Evenki people, they were even closer. Maybe twenty miles from the epicenter. Their names were recorded as Chulak and his brother. They were sleeping in their hut by a river when it happened.
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