Here’s a fun object in an online museum collection:
One of the treasures of the Cabinet of Curiosities of the Tricottet Collection is an impacted video game box (Figs. 1-2), from the meteorite impact that occurred March 26, 2003 around midnight over the Navarro household of Park Forest, a town located in the suburban area of Chicago, IL. The story of the impact, rated number 6 of the 10 most memorable meteor crashes in history on the website How Stuff Works, is given below:From Daily Southtown (2003), also seen in The Star (2003):
“Colby Navarro was sitting in her computer room about midnight Thursday, chatting on the phone with a friend, when she heard a loud boom that sent shards of plaster from her celling falling to the floor. “It scared the living daylights out of me for sure”, said Navarro. “I first thought a gunshot went off and ducked to the ground, but then I saw the 4- to 5-inch diameter hole in my ceiling […]” What crashed through Navarro’s ceiling was a meteorite - about the size of a grapefruit - that landed less than two feet from where she was sitting.”
From the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day July 24, 2003 (where one can see the extraterrestrial culprit as well as a part of the impacted video game box):
“If you wait long enough, a piece of outer space itself will come right to you. As Colby Navarro worked innocently on the computer, a rock from space crashed through the roof, struck the printer, banged off the wall, and came to rest near the filing cabinet. This occurred around midnight on March 26, 2003 in Park Forest, Illinois, USA, near Chicago.”
While the story is amazing by itself, it seems even more fascinating, some might say ironic, that the meteorite struck a video game named Civilization. Video game Civilization II has been rated number 3, after Super Mario Bros and Tetris, of the 100 top games of all times [IGN Entertainment]. This extraordinary item was acquired by the Tricottet Collection from Adam Hupé, meteorite hunter. Photographs of the debris field and of the impact hole attest of the incredible story (photographs courtesy of Adam Hupé - note the video game box on the left of the printer in the debris field).
Tricottet Collection calls this an impactifact, a term coined by Dr. Martin Horejsi referencing an object impacted by a meteorite. Can we say, neato?
