A NEWSOME couple cheated death in a close encounter with a meteorite!
Chris Nolan and his wife Julie were relaxing on holiday in Lincolnshire when the rock plummeted to earth, crashing through their caravan window.
Mr Nolan, a psychiatric nurse at St Luke's Hospital, said when they found the meteorite it was still hot and reeked of sulphur.
The couple were enjoying the afternoon weather while children Luke, 9, and Charlotte, 6, were off riding their bikes.
Mr Nolan told the Examiner: "We were on holiday caravanning in Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire.
"It was about 2.30pm on one of the nice days and we were lying out in the sun. The kids were off cycling in another part of the park.
"There was this enormous bang and me and my wife jumped up.
"Our first thought was perhaps a kid had thrown a stone against the window."
He said there was a man cutting the grass nearby and thought a stone could have been thrown up by the blades. But they realised he was too far away.
"Initially we didn't know what it was. We thought perhaps our bikes had fallen over.
"Then the kids came back and said there was a big hole in the window of the caravan."
The rock had smashed a hole straight through a double perspex window.
"We then noticed there was a rock, about three inches in diameter. We dug it out and it was really hot.
"We didn't find it straight away and it was still hot.
"It's an unusual composition and it stinks of sulphur, like rotten eggs."
The rock has distinctive yellow colours and has holes in it.
He said on the following day a friend came round who knows a bit about geology and confirmed it wasn't from the local area.
He added: "The kids were dead excited. The lad thought we were going to be famous and could sell it to become millionaires.
"Half an hour afterwards we were looking up to the sky thinking that if it had been eight foot to the left we would have been dead!"
And because of the incredible odds of the rock hitting their caravan he decided to try his luck on the National Lottery.
"I bought a lottery ticket thinking, 'this was it', because I bet the odds were about the same. I got the first number but didn't win!"
* Meteorites are asteroids, or other pieces of extra terrestrial matter, that enter the Earth's atmosphere.
* About 40,000 tonnes of extra-terrestrial matter hits the Earth's surface yearly.
* Around 1,000 meteorites the size of footballs hit the Earth's surface each year.
* One of the biggest craters on Earth is at Chicxulub, in the Gulf of Mexico. It is around 180 kilometres across, but nothing can be seen on the ground as it is now partly under ground and under the sea.
* Despite reports of meteorites hitting cars and homes, there have been no cases of anyone being killed directly. However, it was reported that a man died of heart failure after a meteorite struck close to his home in India.
