I was lucky enough to grow up in the countryside, where skies were dark and it was difficult (for me anyway) not to be interested in the night sky. This was where my interest in astronomy started. My mother liked to remind me of the time, after I'd made my first telescope, that I sat my grandmother on the front lawn on a dining chair in the pitch black, and explained to her the amazing things she could see through my telescope. She was very patient and a perfect student even though I imagine she was bored rigid.
The night skies there were such that you only had to stand and stare at the sky for a minute or two, as I often did, to see your first meteor. One gets the impression that this is far more frequent than people talk about now. I can't believe that the frequency of meteor has change over such a short space of time, so it's probably just down to the darkness of the sky and young eyesight. I saw lots of meteors.
Anyway, back to the story. One night, when in my early teens, I was on milk duty - taking the family milk can to the local diary where it was left to be filled by the morning milking, and then collected before breakfast. Suddenly the world lit up around me, brighter than a full moon, and I looked up to see a bright meteor overhead, with pieces in the trail where is was breaking up. It looked something like this:
Because of its brightness it would probably be described as a bolide, which sounds more impressive even though it's not an officially recognized term. A bolide is a very bright meteor, brighter than the moon. This was undoubtedly the brightest meteor I'd ever seen - up to that time.
Fast forward a few years to my time at Reading University (1966-1969). One evening I was playing bridge in my room in hall of residence when through the window I suddenly spotted a bright light crossing the sky leaving a smoke trail. Bearing in mind that it was still light this was obviously something big, and reminds me now of (a lot smaller and without the Hollywood sound effects) the meteor in "Deep Impact", and definitely similar looking to pictures of the Russian one. We all returned to our game knowing that we'd seen something quite extraordinary. The next day the news reported sighting of the meteor ("fireball") across England and Wales. It had crossed the country from south-east to north-west, passing over north Wales where falling pieces were reported to have started fires in the mountains, and ended up in the Irish Sea north of Anglesey. There had been numerous sightings and calls to the police (presumably to arrest it?).
My memory of the precise details of the event, and when it actually was, grew hazy over the years, and about 20 years ago I went through the Times newspaper archives at my local library to find the reports of the event. I eventually did found it, made notes and carefully filed them away for safe keeping. So safe, it seems, that I can no longer find them, which I'm really frustrated about. I feel another visit to the library coming on. If anyone reading this remembers the event, please let me know!
Update 20/04/2014
Last year I spent two days trawling the Times archives again and frustratingly found nothing. Last night I happened across this post again, idly tried an internet search (something I'd done many, many times before) and ... found it! Internet searches are so dependent on what you type in - I guess previously I'd just used the wrong words :(
Anyhow, the meteorite event was named "Bovedy" from the place it (or at least fragments) landed in Northern Ireland. The date was actually 25th April 1969, at 21:25; my memory is that is wasn't dark and this would tally as at this time it would have been dusk (sunset about 20:15, end of twilight around 22:30, according to the tables). The official record in the Meteoritical Bulletin (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=5121) says this:
"The fireball was seen all the way from Sussex through London, Doncaster and Yorkshire to Northern Ireland toward Belfast. It was moving from ESE to WNW very rapidly. There was a swishing noise and people reported explosions. The largest fragment of the meteorite weighing 7,400 g was found near the village of Kilrea, Londonderry County. Searches are being conducted."This description agrees with what I remember, but then I started to find information that didn't, so I read more and wrote another post on the subject.
