{"id":5411,"date":"2004-03-16T15:03:48","date_gmt":"2004-03-16T22:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/03\/16\/old-mrs-olearys-comet.html"},"modified":"2004-03-16T15:03:48","modified_gmt":"2004-03-16T22:03:48","slug":"old_mrs_olearys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/16\/old_mrs_olearys.html","title":{"rendered":"Old Mrs. O’Leary’s … comet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campfire songs notwithstanding, it may well be that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (which killed 300 and burned much of the city) was caused by errant pieces of comet<\/a> — a sobering thought in the context of possible asteroid strikes.<\/p>\n

New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth’s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

[…] Wood cited eyewitness reports of spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke and “fire balloons” falling from the sky to bolster his theory. If the fire had been caused by comet debris, which is believed to have consisted of small pieces of frozen methane, acetylene or other highly combustible chemicals, it also would explain the cause of the fires blazing north of Chicago, which wiped out 2,000 people and burned 4 million acres of farm and prairie lands.<\/p>\n

The deceased included many who showed no signs of being burned, Wood said. “This would be consistent with either the absence of oxygen or the presence of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide above lethal levels,” — a rare — but not unprecedented — situation in large forest fires.<\/p>\n

In all, over a 24-hour period, an area of land the size of Connecticut was burned. Wood speculates the main body of the comet crashed into Lake Michigan, with peripheral fragments causing the fires in Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yikes.<\/p>\n

(via Cronaca<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campfire songs notwithstanding, it may well be that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (which killed 300 and burned much of the city) was caused by errant pieces of comet…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":48083,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/13\/an-animated-comet-landing.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":0},"title":"An animated comet landing","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Nov-14 9:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Wicked cool indeed. Originally shared by +Les Jenkins: Wicked cool. Brilliant animation of the entire comet landing The always amazing XKCD had, by far, the best liveblog of the historic landing on the comet 67P\/Churyumov\u2013Gerasimenko today: Each step was documented as a brilliant cartoon, which has been compiled into the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44193,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/06\/comet.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":1},"title":"Comet!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 6-Aug-14 11:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Extremely (and astrophysically, and, in fact, temperature-wise) cool.Reshared post from +Philip PlaitThar be comet here!After a decade in space, Rosetta has arrived at its cometary target... and the pictures so far are amazing.http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/bad_astronomy\/2014\/08\/06\/rosetta_its_journey_to_a_comet_achieves_its_goal.html\ufeff Rosetta Arrives at a Comet! After a journey of more than 10 years and a total of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28444,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/30\/asteroid-comet-ufo-space-battle-happy-anniversary-tunguska-event.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":2},"title":"Asteroid? Comet? UFO space battle? Happy Anniversary, Tunguska Event!","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 30-Jun-12 1:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"And many happy hopefully-never-to-returns.Reshared post from +Philip Plait#BAFact: Today is the 104th anniversary of the Tunguska Event: an asteroid impact over Russia.On June 30, 1908, a chunk of cosmic debris about the size of an office building slammed into the Earth's atmosphere and detonated over Russia. Now known as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30370,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/26\/a-comets-tale.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":3},"title":"A Comet's Tale","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 26-Sep-12 10:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Will it be the brightest thing since sliced bread? \u00a0Er, since, oh, Halley's Comet back when we didn't all live in light-polluting cities? \u00a0We'll know in a year ... Embedded Link Blazing new comet may OUTSHINE THE MOON in 2013 \u2022 The Register Astroboffins have spotted a new comet that's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44734,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/01\/rt-googlescifair-the-size-of.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":4},"title":"RT @googlescifair: The size of…","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Sep-14 10:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"RT @googlescifair: The size of comet Churymov-Gerasimenko in relation to downtown Los Angeles (via @quark1972) #GSF2014 http:\/\/t.co\/AKJIcv8\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39991,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/11\/earth-invades-mars.html","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":5},"title":"Earth Invades Mars!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 11-Dec-13 10:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"If signs of life, past or present, are found on Mars ... it may be actual Earth life that got blasted there by asteroid \/ comet collisions with the Earth. \u00a0Interesting.\ufeff Dinosaur impact 'sent life to Mars' View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}