* Astronomy

Did a meteor strike near Jacksonville 448 years ago?

At sea in August 1564, a Spanish priest in Pedro Menendez' fleet wrote of a "miracle from heaven" - a comet as bright as the sun, streaking west toward Florida.
On land, the hungry, miserable French settlers at Fort Caroline were stunned by a "stroke of lightning" that, one wrote, instantly "consumed about 500 acres and burned with such a bright heat that the birds which lived in the meadows were consumed."
The fire burned for three days. The river "seemed almost to boil." Enough fish died to fill 50 carts.
A retired University of North Florida professor, Jay Huebner, thinks the Spanish comet and the French lightning strike were very likely the same thing - an object from outer space that struck at the edge of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.
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