Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Jan 13, 2007 17:47:11 GMT -6
2004 Meteorite-damaged NZ sofa for sale
Sunday Jan 14 07:34 AEDT
A New Zealand couple are auctioning a sofa which was damaged when a meteorite crashed through the roof of their Auckland home.
Phil and Brenda Archer, are advertising the sofa - and a replica meteorite - for sale on the TradeMe website.
The couple were propelled into the headlines when the meteorite smashed through the roof of their Auckland home in June 2004.
The rock travelled up to 700 million kilometres from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The meteorite was a four billion-year-old 1.3 kg rock and was the last known recovered meteorite to have landed in New Zealand.
Named the Auckland meteorite, the space rock was bought for $NZ40,000 ($A35,500) by the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Along with the sofa the couple have also put on the website ruptured roofing tiles, a splintered ceiling beam, a ceiling panel and a pink batt all damaged by the meteorite.
At 7.30am Sunday the reserve price of $400 for the sofa had not been met.
Archer was sitting on the toilet checking out new cars in a motoring magazine when the meteorite hit his house....
"There was this huge bang and a cloud of dust and debris went through the front room. I thought a car had hit the house."
In the only account in New Zealand of a meteorite crashing into a house, the chunk of space rock punched a hole through the roof of the Archers' home, bounced off their couch, ricocheted off the ceiling and back on to the couch before ending up on the floor.
Source: www.dailyastronomy.com/story.asp?ID=155231&Title=Meteorite-damaged%20NZ%20sofa%20for%20sale
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Quite an odd story.