The fragments of a comet had struck the earth.

But the meaning of what had happened was not discovered until long
afterward. To the astronomers who, with astonishment not less than
that of other people, watched the wonderful scene, it was an
unparalleled ``shower of meteors.'' They did not then suspect that
those meteors had once formed the head of a comet. Light dawned when,
a year later, Prof. Denison Olmsted, of Yale College, demonstrated
that the meteors had all moved in parallel orbits around the sun, and
that these orbits intersected that of the earth at the point where our
planet happened to be on the memorable night of November 13th.
Professor Olmsted even went so far as to suggest that the cloud of
meteors that had encountered the earth might form a diffuse comet; but
full recognition of the fact that they were cometary débris came
later, as the result of further investigation. The key to the secret
was plainly displayed in the spectacle itself, and was noticed without
being understood by thousands of the terror-stricken beholders. It was
an umbrella of fire that had opened overhead and covered the heavens;
in other words, the meteors all radiated from a particular point in
the constellation Leo, and, being countless as the snowflakes in a
winter tempest, they ribbed the sky with fiery streaks. Professor
Olmsted showed that the radiation of the meteors from a fixed point
was an effect of perspective, and in itself a proof that they were
moving in parallel paths when they encountered the earth. The fact was
noted that there had been a similar, but incomparably less brilliant,
display of meteors on the same day of November, 1832, and it was
rightly concluded that these had belonged to the same stream, although
the true relationship of the phenomena was not immediately
apprehended. Olmsted ascribed to the meteors a revolution about the
sun once in every six months, bringing them to the intersection of