Name in the NHM catalogue: Miskolcz
Locality*: Miskolc, town with county rights, HUN
Co-ordinates: 48° 7' N, 20° 48' E
Fall/find: Fall
Date of the fall*: 10.05.1560
Type (level 1): Stone, doubtful
Group: No data available
Recovered weight: No data available
Synonyms*: Miskolc
Remark: Data from Grady, M. M. (2000): Catalogue of meteorites. 5th rev. enl. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Data marked with an asterisk (*) are supplemented or corrected.
History of the fall: According to a chronicle by Miklós Istvánffy in 1560 “at the town of Miskolc five large stones, equal to a human head in size, of yellowish and brownish colour and sulphurous smell, fell, after sudden disturbance of the clear sky by terrible lightning, thunder and motion of air, which then died away in a twinkle. One of them is still kept in the Diósgyõr castle, the others were sent by Zsigmond Balassa to [King] Ferdinand.” Márton Szent-Iványi dated the event to May 10, 1560, whereas an early 18th century manuscript wrote 1559. Although the description of the fall was borrowed from Istvánffy’s chronicle, this false year was given as well in a paper published in 1722 by the Bresslauer Sammlungen. Chladni (1819) took over this latter data, which was then passed to subsequent meteorite catalogues.
Based on Papp, G. (2004): A critical review of 16-17th century reports on meteorite falls in and around the Carpathian Basin (Additions and corrections to Grady’s Catalogue of Meteorites). Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici, 96, 17–26.