On June 30, 1908, the skies in a remote area of Siberia split open, and havoc rained on the earth for hundreds of miles in every direction. The Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth’s recent history, the collision of a meteoroid or comet with the earth’s atmostphere, estimated as the equivalent to a 10-15 megaton bomb.
Read more about the Tunguska Event:
Wikipedia:
A full resource for eyewitness accounts and pix.
BBC News:
What scientists think caused the explosion/impact.
Hungarian Academy of Sciences:
A reconstruction of what they think the Tunguska Explosion sounded like.
Nature:
An article about Tunguska at 100.
Nova ScienceNow:
Watch the show about Asteroids and the potential for future catastrophic impacts.
Nova:
Read a transcript from the 1997 show on the Doomsday Asteroid.
New Scientist:
Sent a correspondent to the site 100 years later. (reg req’d for article, but see video below)
Dr. Carl Sagan belived that it was caused by a comet (about the size of a football field). Striking the Earth at perhaps 100,000 kilometers an hour ( I think that’s about over a 1,000 miles an hour) and caused a fireball that burned the trees for miles around the site.