A meteorite crashed through the roof of a Connecticut home on Wednesday, according to the local news channel WFSB.
Initially believed to be a bit of runway concrete perhaps dropped by an passing airplane when landing gear was lowered, officials at the Yale Peabody Museum have since confirmed that the object is, in fact, from Space and could be as old as 4.5 billion years.
When the meteorite roughly the size of a softball hit, resident Larry Beck said he was watching television with his wife in the living room when he heard a bang like a gunshot.
Looking up, however, he said he “saw the ceiling coming down” and that the sheet rock in his dining room broke away.
In all, the object damaged the couple’s roof, copper piping and cracked the ceiling in the kitchen before it came to a stop.
“For this to crash through asphalt shingles, the roof, smash copper pipe, crack a ceiling, it was moving very quickly,” Wolcott police Chief Edward Stephens said.
When the couple called their daughter Wendy Taylor to explain what had happened, Taylor said she made her mother repeat herself over and over again.
“I’m like, ‘A rock? A rock came through your roof and into the house?’ It just didn’t make any sense,” she told WFSB.
The Becks said they have called the insurance company who are due to come out to inspect the damage within the next week.
While injury due to being hit by a meteorite is very rare, the Russian meteorite that struck earlier this year created a sonic boom that shattered buildings and injured more than a thousand people.
However, the only known person to have actually been hit by a meteorite was Ann Hodges who, while napping on her couch in Sylacauga, Ala. in 1954, was hit by meteorite similar in size to the one that broke the Becks’ roof, though only after bouncing off a nearby radio. Hodges sustained a large bruise, but was otherwise fine.
To see a picture of the meteorite that hit the Becks' home, click here.