in 1989, an asteroid called 4581 asclepius zipped through an area of space that earth had occupied just 6 hours earlier.

if it had struck the earth, the destruction would have been the equivalent of a 600 megaton nuclear weapon - 6 times bigger than the largest such weapon ever made, and enough to completely destroy 5 or 6 states, not counting any subsequent damage from aftershocks, tidal waves, atmospheric compression, etc.

now the bad news: 4581 asclepius is relatively tiny, as asteroids go - not even a half mile across. it is also likely to pop up hundreds of more times. and last time, we only spotted it 9 days after it had already passed by.

one of the items found in king tut's tomb was a knife made out of metal from a meteorite.

ann hodges was the only human being that we know of who was ever hit by a meteor, way back in 1954. rather than killing her or endowing her with super powers, it gave her a nasty bruise on her hip.

in 1833, the leonid meteor shower was so prolific that the meteors were as numerous as flakes of snow.

every day, about 100 tons of space dust lands on earth.