November 12, 1833: The Night the Stars Fell
In the early hours of November 12, 1833, the world witnessed one of the most extraordinary celestial events in recorded history — a massive rain of fire that convinced people the world was ending.
It was a meteor storm so intense it seemed the heavens were ablaze.
In Boston, an astonishing 72,000 meteors per hour were estimated. On the basis of contemporary descriptions, researchers estimate that more than 240,000 meteors lit up the sky in a nine-hour period.
Known as The Night the Stars Fell, observers described thousands of luminous streaks lighting up the sky each minute. Newspapers reported awe-struck accounts, with one from Illinois declaring, “The very heavens seemed ablaze.”
The Lakota people memorialized it by resetting their calendar, while notable figures like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass later recounted the phenomenon in their writings.
The event ultimately marked a turning point in scientific understanding.
Yale astronomer Denison Olmsted investigated the phenomenon and spearheaded one of the first crowd-sourced scientific studies.
By gathering detailed reports from across the continent, he concluded that the meteors originated from a radiant point in the constellation Leo, caused by Earth passing through a comet’s debris trail.
This groundbreaking discovery spurred interest in meteor showers and citizen science. Today, the Leonid meteor shower — remnants of the comet Tempel-Tuttle — returns annually, peaking mid-November.
Image: A 1889 woodcut depiction of the meteor shower on November 13, 1833
