Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

I think about it every November. It’s an event from our history, but it’s become an oddly traditional part of my life. It happened on November 13, 1833, which makes this year the 192nd anniversary of it. It’s the Rain of Fire.

If it happened today, we’d refer to it as the Leonid Meteor Shower. It does still happen today, of course, but the brightest meteor shower on record was in 1833. And we hadn’t invented astronomy then.

The thing that’s special about this one is the Lock Haven had just been founded the week before. So the brand-new citizens of Lock Haven had an exciting time looking up at the skies and thinking the world was ending and they were about to die.

It had been a slow news week. A man named John Yarrish had grown a record-setting radish that was over ten pounds. And Jeremiah Church had founded Lock Haven, selling off lots on November 4, 1833. And that had been about it.

But then, November 13 came around. And the people in the new city were awakened by a sound, which John Blair Linn’s history describes as “crepitating or hurtling,” whatever those mean. Everyone rushed out of their homes to look at the sky, and they saw thousands of meteors flying across the sky to the northwest.

Initially this led to a bit of panic as everyone thought it was the end of the world. But you’ll notice you’re still here and reading this, so they deduced that it was probably going to be okay, and everyone calmed down to watch the show, which was afterward referred to as the “Rain of Fire.”

“Thousands of shooting stars going in a northwest direction, leaving brilliant tracks behind,” said Linn’s History, which also notes that it was the brightest one since November 12, 1799.

Another witness to the Rain of Fire was Seth Nelson, of Keating Township. Now, one thing you should know about Seth Nelson is that he had a somewhat shaky relationship with the truth. Nelson was a panther hunter, and was all full of stories about how he often threw down his gun and took on panthers and bears using just his fists.

Nelson not being horribly scarred, it’s likely these stories were exaggerated. He also talked about being immortal and having gone blind but getting better through sheer toughness, so he was something of a fabricator, is what I’m saying here.

Nelson claimed to have been hunting in the north when he decided to lay down for the night. (That part is probably true.) He said he woke up when the sound of the meteor shower began, and he saw the stars falling.

They fell a lot closer to Seth Nelson than to anyone else, though, according to his statement.
“These meteors were falling as fast as any heavy snow storm,” he later wrote. “They appeared to be as large as my fist and upon touching the earth they disappeared.”

This is not the way any geology professor will exactly describe it. Nelson also claimed that the meteors hit him in the head, but he didn’t even feel it and was unhurt. I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it’s supposed to work, but he was Seth Nelson, and unstoppable, and it would have taken entire planets hitting him in the head to so much as give him a small bruise.

Nelson’s exaggerations aside, the Rain of Fire was a neat little beginning to our city’s history. I’ve always loved the weird and entertaining history we have here, and if you agree with me, take a moment to celebrate the Rain of Fire. Do what I do. Step outside at night, look around at our community….And look up.