A "Tunguska" Event in British Guyana in 1935?
By Duncan Steel

In the issue of this magazine dated Ausust 1995, Roberto Gorelli gave an interesting account of the Rio Curacá (Brazil) event of August 13, 1930. Some additional information has been discussed by Mark Bailey and co-workers in a paper in The Observatory magazine, October, 1995. I will briefly mention some other matters concerning that "Brazilian Tunguska" before passing on to the main subject of this article, a possible similar event in British Guyana in 1935.

Bailey et al. discuss the possibility that the Brazilian event might be linked to the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on the same day of the year. They do not, however, mention that close to the same date in 1972 (actually August 10) there was a large bolide filmed skipping through the upper atmosphere above western Wyoming and Montana, departing from the Earth above Canada (see Sky & Telescope, vol. 44, pp. 269-272, 1972). This may, of course, be merely a coincidence.

News of the Brazilian explosion was relayed to the outside world over the next few months. The Daily Herald (a London newspaper which has since closed down) carried the following front-page story on March 6, 1931:

Menace of Meteors Like Huge Bombs from Space

HURRICANE OF FLAME

Blazing Bolts Fire Forests

MANKIND'S LUCK

Another colossal bombardment of the earth from outer space has just been revealed. Three great meteors, falling in Brazil, fired and depopulated hundreds of miles of jungle.

News of this catastrophe has only now reached civilisation because the meteors fell in the remote South American wilderness. It was yet another lucky escape of mankind from an appalling and unrealised peril.

The last great meteor fell in Siberia in 1908 in a district so remote that only last year were details of its destruction given to the world. Had either of these two meteor falls chanced to strike a city in a densely populated country, frightful loss of life and damage would have been caused.

"A meteor," Mr. C.J.P. Cave, an ex-president of the Royal Meteorological Society, stated recently, "carries in front of it a mass of compressed and incandescent air. When it strikes the earth, this air `splashes' in a hurricane of fire..."

The Brazilian meteors are reported (says the Central News) by Father Fidelio, of Aviano, writing from San Paulo de Alivencia, in the State of Amazonas, to the papal newspaper, "Osservatore Romano."

BLAZING FOREST

The meteors fell almost simultaneously during an amazing storm. Terrific heat was engendered. Immediately they struck the ground, the whole forest was ablaze. The fire continued uninterrupted for some months, depopulating a large area.

The fall of the meteor was preceded by remarkable atmospheric disturbances. At 8 o'clock in the morning the sun became blood-red and a penumbra spread all over the sky, producing the effect of a solar eclipse. Then an immense cloud of reddish powder filled the air and it looked "as if the whole world was going to blaze up."

WHISTLING SOUND

The powder was succeeded by fine cinders which covered trees and vegetation with a blanket of white. There followed a whistling sound that pierced the air with ear-breaking intensity, then another and another. Three great explosions were heard and the earth trembled.

The Siberian meteor of 1908 completely destroyed the forest over an area of 70 miles in diameter. Its roar was heard 600 miles away, and its glare maintained twilight all night even in England.

More recently, the paper by Bailey et al. was the subject of a story in The Sunday Telegraph (London) on October 22, 1995.

As Gorelli noted, in issue no. 6 of vol. 17 of WGN (the journal of the International Meteor Organization), pp. 247-248, 1989, Gennadij Andreev had an article entitled "The Brazilian Twin of the Tunguska Meteorite: Myth or Reality?" in which he discussed what was known about the event. He pointed out that L.A. Kulik published an article entitled "The Brazilian Twin of the Tunguska meteorite" in a popular-level Russian magazine in 1931.

I now move on to the suspected explosion over British Guyana in 1935. The main source for information on this is a story entitled "Tornado or Meteor Crash" in the magazine entitled The Sky (the forerunner of Sky & Telescope), September, 1939, pp. 8-10 & 24. A report from Serge A. Korff of the Bartol Research Foundation, Franklin Institute (Delaware, USA) was printed, he having been in the area _ the Rupununi region of British Guyana/Guiana _ a couple of months later. The date of the explosion appears to have been December 11, 1935 at about 21:00 local time. I might note that this is near the date of the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, but this may again be a coincidence. The location is given as being near 2° 10' North, 59° 10' West, close to Marudi Mountain.

Korff's description suggested that the region of devastation might be greater than that involved in the Tunguska event itself. On his suggestion a message was sent to William H. Holden, who in 1937 was in the general region with the Terry-Holden expedition of the American Museum of Natural History.

That group hiked to the top of Marudi Mountain in November, 1937 and reported seeing an area some miles across where the trees had been broken off about 25 feet above their bases, although regrowth over two years in this tropical jungle had made it difficult to define the area affected. Holden confirmed, on returning to New York, that he believed the devastation was due to an atmospheric explosion of cosmic origin. An explorer and author, Desmond Holdridge, also visited the region in the late 1930s and confirmed the suspicion that a comet or asteroid detonation was responsible.

Korff obtained several local reports, the best being from a Scottish gold miner, Godfrey Davidson, who reported having been woken by the explosion, with pots and pans being dislodged in his kitchen, and seeing a luminous residual trail in the sky. A short while later, while prospecting, he came across a devastated region of the jungle he estimated to be about five by ten miles (8 by 16 km), with the trees all seeming to have been pushed over.

Holden was unsure of the origin of the flattening of the forest, and pointed out that similar destruction can result from tornadoes. Holdridge, however, reported eye-witness accounts in accord with a large meteoroid/small asteroid entry, with a body passing overhead accompanied by a terrific roar (presumably electrophonic effects), later concussions, and the sky being lit up like daylight. A local aircraft operator, Art Williams, reported seeing an area of forest more than twenty miles (32 km) in extent which had been destroyed, and he later stated that the shattered jungle was elongated rather than circular, as occurred at Tunguska and would be expected from the air blast caused by an object entering away from the vertical (the most likely entry angle for all cosmic projectiles is 45 degrees).

There is a report of the Guyanan event, largely derived from the account in The Sky, in the newsletter Meteor News, no. 20, March, 1974 . Apparently as a result of that, the publishers (Karl and Wanda Simmons, of Callahan, Florida) had some correspondence with a Mr F.A. Liems of Paramaribo, Surinam, concerning a possible crater/event at Wayombo in that country; he gives the location as 5.25° North, 56.05° West. The letters date from 1976; apparently Liems died in 1982. In 1990, as a result of Andreev's article in WGN about the Brazilian event, Wanda Simmons sent copies to him, and he kindly sent copies on to me. Various notes/maps/letters are included, but it is difficult to know what to make of them: my impression is that this concerns something that occurred some time ago, not in this century, and its linkage with an incursion by an asteroid or comet is far from clear.

Finally, since we are discussing possible bolide damage in recent decades, I point out the letter by an Allan Young published in Sky & Telescope, vol. 51, p. 235, April, 1976. This describes possible forest devastation over some hundreds of meters as seen from the air in the Irian Jaya (the west of the island of New Guinea). Again, linkage with an extraterrestrial object detonating in the atmosphere is questionable.

Dr. Duncan Steel works at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, where he runs the only southern-hemisphere search program for Earth crossing asteroids, and also at the University of Adelaide, where he makes radar observations of meteors. His book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets is reviewed on p. 24.