Knyahinya

Name in the NHM catalogue: Knyahinya
Locality*: Knyahynya Strychava, Velyky Bereznyan’skyy rayon [district], Zakarpat’ska oblast’ [province], UKR
Co-ordinates: 48° 54' N, 22° 24' E
Fall/find: Fall
Date of the fall*: 09.06.1866, 17:00
Type (level 1): Stone
Type (level 2): Chondrite
Type (level 3): Ordinary chondrite
Group: L5
Further data: Brecciated
Recovered weight: 500 kg
Synonyms: Csillagfalva, Knahyna, Kniaginia, Knyhyna, Kuyahinga, Nagy-Bereszna
Remark: Data from Grady, M. M. (2000): Catalogue of meteorites. 5^th rev. enl. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Data marked with an asterisk (*) are supplemented or corrected.

History of the fall: A fireball was first noticed in northern Hungary above the town now called Liptovský Mikuláš and flew some 220 km to the east until exploded with thunderous detonation above Knyahinya, producing a black cloud. A shower of stones fell from the cloud with a whizzing noise. Then the black cloud turned to a grey cloud of dust, moving southward and dispersed by the wind. Some 1200 stones fell in a ~7 km × 4 km strewn field in the vicinity of Zboj (now Slovakia), Nova Stuzhitsya, Knyahinya and Strychava (now Ukraine) but nobody was injured. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences sent a commission to visit the scene. The largest recovered specimen (now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna) weighed some 300 kg, the second largest (46 kg) one was bought for 750 florins for the Hungarian National Museum (destroyed by fire in 1956).