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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show for those interested in the big and bizarre moments

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Speaker 1: of history. I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about one woman's surprise encounter with the outer space

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Speaker 1: junkyard that hangs above all our heads. The day was

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Speaker 1: January twenty second, nineteen ninety seven. Tulsa resident Lottie Williams

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Speaker 1: was struck by falling debris from a Delta to rocket. Thankfully,

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Speaker 1: she wasn't injured by the impact, as the small fragment

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Speaker 1: that hit her was relatively light and likely traveling at

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Speaker 1: a low speed thanks to wind currents. Additional debris from

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Speaker 1: the rocket was recovered several hundred miles away in Tech,

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Speaker 1: but thankfully no one else was hit by the falling pieces.

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Speaker 1: In fact, since the space Age began, Lottie Williams was

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Speaker 1: and still is the only person on record to be

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Speaker 1: struck by a man made piece of space junk. If

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Speaker 1: you've never heard that term before, space junk or space

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Speaker 1: debris refers to all the clutter in Earth's orbit left

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Speaker 1: behind by human activity, that includes defunct satellites, discarded rocket boosters,

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Speaker 1: and even objects thrown out by astronauts, such as personal

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Speaker 1: hygiene products and unneeded equipment. According to NASA, there are

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Speaker 1: currently more than twenty five thousand pieces of debris larger

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Speaker 1: than ten centimeters and more than one hundred million larger

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Speaker 1: than one millimeter. Many of the tiniest pieces are flecks

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Speaker 1: of paint released by thermal stress, but since orbital debris

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Speaker 1: circles the Earth at about fifteen thousand miles per hour,

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Speaker 1: even a fleck of paint can punch a hole in

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Speaker 1: a spacesuit or damage fragile electronics. In nineteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: NASA founded the Orbital Debris Program to monitor the accumulation

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Speaker 1: of space junk and to develop mitigation strategies to reduce

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Speaker 1: the risk it poses to humans both in orbit and

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Speaker 1: on Earth. Investigations confirmed that although space junk falls back

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Speaker 1: to Earth nearly every day, no one usually notices. That's

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Speaker 1: because the significant portion of the debris burns up when

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Speaker 1: re entering Earth's atmosphere, and the objects that do make

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Speaker 1: it through typically fall into oceans or onto sparsely populated

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Speaker 1: regions like the Canadian tundra or the Australian outback. Those

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Speaker 1: safe descents are a result of the space industry's coordinated

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Speaker 1: efforts to de orbit its rocket parts and other defunct

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Speaker 1: equipment in a controlled fashion. In other words, when NASA

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Speaker 1: launches a rocket, the orbit of the parts it will

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Speaker 1: shed has already been calculated in advance to help ensure

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Speaker 1: that they'll eventually descend in uninhabited areas. It's not an

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Speaker 1: exact science, but it works well enough for there to

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Speaker 1: be no confirmed reports of falling space debris ever hurting anyone.

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Speaker 1: Of course, that doesn't mean it's never hit anyone. In

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Speaker 1: the early morning of January twenty second, nineteen ninety seven,

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Speaker 1: Lottie Williams was walking through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma,

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Speaker 1: with a small group of friends when she noticed a

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Speaker 1: bright flash of light in the sky. She turned to

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Speaker 1: her friends to tell them to look, and when she

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Speaker 1: turned back, the light was streaking towards them. As the

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Speaker 1: burning light disappeared over a building, Williams concluded that it

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Speaker 1: must have been a shooting star. Her theory was seemingly

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Speaker 1: confirmed a few minutes later when she was struck on

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Speaker 1: the shoulder by a charred object falling slowly from the sky. However,

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Speaker 1: Upon closer inspection, Williams found that it wasn't a meteorite.

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Speaker 1: It was a burnt scrap of woven material measuring about

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Speaker 1: six inches long. The weight was comparable to an empty

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Speaker 1: soda can. She later told reporters, it looked like a

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Speaker 1: piece of fabric, except when you tapped it it sounded metallic.

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Speaker 1: Williams wasn't sure what to make of the incident at first,

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Speaker 1: but when she saw news reports of space junk found

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Speaker 1: on the ground in Texas, she realized she'd been struck

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Speaker 1: by a piece of a disintegrating rocket. To be precise,

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Speaker 1: it was part of the insulation that had lined the

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Speaker 1: thrust chamber of the second stage of a Delta two rocket.

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Speaker 1: The rocket had been used to launch an Air Force

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Speaker 1: satellite the previous spring, and the spent booster had languished

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Speaker 1: in a decaying orbit ever since. Then. In late January,

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Speaker 1: it finally re entered Earth's atmosphere above Topeka, Kansas, and

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Speaker 1: then scattered pieces of itself all across Oklahoma and Texas.

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Speaker 1: Objects made of materials with high melting points were the

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Speaker 1: likeliest to survive re entry, and that certainly proved true

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Speaker 1: of the debris that fell on Texas. The largest piece

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Speaker 1: was a five hundred and fifty pounds stainless steel fuel tank,

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Speaker 1: which had landed in the front yard of a farmer

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Speaker 1: in Georgetown, Texas, just fifty meters from his door. Another

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Speaker 1: sizeable component was discovered in the town of Sageen, a

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Speaker 1: large titanium pressure vessel that had fallen at such a

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Speaker 1: high velocity that it had embedded itself halfway into a field.

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Speaker 1: NASA investigators scooped up the debris and shipped it to

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Speaker 1: the Johnson Space Center in Houston. They quickly confirmed that

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Speaker 1: the fuel tank and the pressure vessel had come from

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Speaker 1: the Delta too, but when they heard about the metal

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Speaker 1: mesh that had fallen on Lottie Williams, they weren't convinced

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Speaker 1: it was related. After all, it had been recovered several

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Speaker 1: hundred miles north of most of the Delta two's debris.

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Speaker 1: Williams never loaned the object to NASA for evaluation, but

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Speaker 1: she did send a piece of it to CORD, the

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Speaker 1: Center for Orbital and re Entry Debris Studies. The aerospace

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Speaker 1: nonprofit had the mesh examined by experts from the US

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Speaker 1: Air Force, and they concluded that its composition was consistent

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Speaker 1: with Delta two insulation, and that the timing and location

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Speaker 1: of its recovery aligned with the re entry and breakup

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Speaker 1: of the rocket, because while the fragment had landed far

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Speaker 1: up range of the heavier debris that fell in Central Texas,

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Speaker 1: it was still within the predicted field or footprint. It

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Speaker 1: just hadn't traveled as far because it weighed so little.

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Speaker 1: Taken together, all that circumstantial evidence was enough to convince

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Speaker 1: NASA and the Guinness Book of World Records that Lottie

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Speaker 1: Williams was indeed the first person to be struck by

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Speaker 1: falling space junk. According to her, The Deputy's Secretary of

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Speaker 1: Defense sent her a letter apologizing for the incident, but

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Speaker 1: Williams was less than pleased with the outcome of the investigations.

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Speaker 1: I was thinking I had something celestial, she told reporters,

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Speaker 1: and here I got something man made. Her disappointment is understandable,

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Speaker 1: but Williams still walked away with a pretty cool claim

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Speaker 1: to fame, and one that nobody is likely to match.

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Speaker 1: That's because NASA actually crunched the numbers, and, according to

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Speaker 1: its scientists, the odds of being hit by a chunk

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Speaker 1: of falling space debris are somewhere in the neighborhood of

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Speaker 1: one in a trillion, but whether that makes Lottie Williams

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Speaker 1: incredibly lucky or unlucky is still up for debate. I'm Gabelusier,

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you now know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. If you have a second

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Speaker 1: and you're so inclined, consider keeping up with us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and feel free to

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Speaker 1: pass along any comments or questions you may have by

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Speaker 1: writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to

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Speaker 1: Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you

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Speaker 1: for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for

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Speaker 1: another Day in History class act to be the