A college in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu is at the center of a bizarre mystery. A blast broke windows, injured three people, and killed a local bus driver, with the only evidence being a small, diamond-like rock found in the center of the crater. Increasingly, it looks like this bus driver was the victim of a meteor strike, a possible human first. Uh, hooray?
It’s not a done deal. Originally, it was believed that construction workers had forgotten some explosives and they’d detonated, but no trace of explosives have been found. Currently, authorities are arguing meteor strike because it’s the only thing that makes sense. There have been plenty of claims over the centuries that a meteor took somebody out, but almost none of them are verifiable, so this bus driver might have the dubious honor of being the first confirmed death by meteor strike.
To give you an idea of the odds this poor guy beat, the odds of you, and only you, getting picked off by a space rock are 1 in 74,817,414. You literally have a better chance of dying in a fireworks accident, a lightning strike, or being savaged by dogs. A lot has to line up to get killed this way — the meteor has to not careen off into space to kill some nascent alien civilization, it has to not burn up completely in the atmosphere, it has to strike land on a planet where the majority of its surface is water, and it has to strike a populated area. In other words, everything had to go just right for this blast to happen. Consider it a gentle reminder that no matter what happens to you, things can always get worse.
(Via Reuters)