The Tunguska Event: Eyewitness Account

P. P. Kosolapov, Vanavara Trading Post

Interviewed by L. A. Kulik, 1927:

In June of 1908, around 8 in the morning, he intended to go haying from that same [Vanavara] trading post, but he needed a nail. Not finding one in his rooms, he went out into the yard and began to pull a nail out of a window frame with pliers. All of a sudden, it was as if something was intensely burning his ears. Grabbing them and thinking that the roof had caught fire, he raised his head and asked S. B. Semyonov, who was sitting on the porch of his house, “Did you see anything?” “How could I not see it,” replied the other, “It seemed to me as if I too had been enveloped by heat.” P. P. Kosolapov went into the house then and there, but he had only just entered the room and wanted to sit on the floor and get to work, when a boom resounded, dirt came sifting down from the ceiling, the screen flew off the Russian oven onto the cot standing opposite the oven, and one pane from the window was knocked out into the room. After that a sound resembling peals of thunder resounded, receding toward the north. Once it quieted down, P. P. Kosolapov went outside, but didn’t notice anything else.[1]

[Notes and Further Reading]

[1] L. A. Kulik, “K voprosu o mestye padeniia Tungusskogo meteorita 1908 g. “ [The Problem of the Impact Site of the Tunguska Meteorite of 1908”], Doklady Akademiya Nauk SSSR (A), No. 23, 1927, pp. 399-402. An English translation may be found in E. L. Krinov, Giant Meteorites, trans. J. S. Romankiewicz, Permagon 1966, p. 149.] [Return to text.]

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