Holbrook Meteorites

Falling to earth in the same year as the sinking of the HMS Titanic, the Holbrook meteorite fall of 1912 is considered still to be one of the most important of meteorite falls. Around dinnertime on July 19th, 1912, multiple explosions in the sky heralded the fall of more than 1400 fragments of the meteorite over Holbrook Arizona, drawing people to the Aztec railroad yard along the Santa Fe line where most of the fragments were recovered.

The Holbrook fall is a member of the relatively sparse L/LL ordinary chondrite geochemical group which have total iron abundances intermediate to those of the L and LL chondrites (relatively low and very low iron, respectively). Three are only 11 witnessed L/LL falls that are known to have been recovered. Even more unusual, , the Holbrook is one of only four witnessed falls listed exactly as L/LL6 ordinary chondrites at the Meteoritical Bulletin Database (the other falls besides the Holbrook are Cabezo de Mayo, Trysil, and Sultanpur.)