Featured on PDR in the collection James Sowerby’s British Mineralogy (1802–17)

On December 13, 1795, a fifty-six-pound meteorite fell from the sky into an English quarry. Wondering if it had “come from some volcano in the Moon”, the landowner turned this lump of multi-colored minerals over to James Sowerby, a well-connected scientific illustrator and naturalist. Sowerby published an extensive account of what became known as the “Yorkshire Meteorite” in his five-part mineralogical handbook, inviting pushback from geologists who thought that including a “Phaëton from the heavens might seem absurd in a work on British Mineralogy”. Since the curious object contained substances commonly found within mines of the British Isles, Sowerby believed the meteorite belonged in a volume primarily devoted to more mundane earthbound subjects, such as table salt and oxygenized carbon.