Did A Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire?

Alien54 writes "Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere."

Comments

Read that a couple of years ago

[Bravo_Two_Zero]

I don't recall where, but I'd read that a couple of years ago. The main support came from what happend to a small town about 40 miles outside Chicago that was essentially obliterated by a rapid, intense fire. I think it was the center of the activity mentioned as "north of Chicago" in the article. I'm glad to see the theory getting a little more publicity and play.

Re:Read that a couple of years ago

[DynaSoar]

"I don't recall where, but I'd read that a couple of years ago."

I read it about 35 years ago. There were around 150 fires that night in various places around Wisconsin.

I *think* it was in "Mysterious Fires and Lights" by Jacques Vallee, but I may be mistaken. It was, after all, 35 years ago.

Re:Read that a couple of years ago

[pensdude]

The November 1990 issue of Fate magazine has an article on the comet (pp 44-52). It mentions showers of burning sand (cometary debris) and reports of fires starting in basements where heavier-than-air gasses would settle. The article also notes numerous vctims dead without visible burns, possibly from carbon monoxide or excessive levels of carbon dioxide. Additionally, the other cities are names Pestigo WI and Manitee MI.

Disney Science...

[braddock]

I like the THEORY, but this is a story from Disney's esteamed peer-reviewed Discovery channel about a theory from a man who has spent decades as a known UFO investigator.

Robert Wood's resume can be found here, at the site MajesticDocuments.com. Not that that necesarily discredits the theory, but it definitly gives some pause to the source.

Braddock Gaskill

Re:Disney Science...

[SEWilco]

The papers from that conference are available for purchase in PDF format in the AIAA web site - In the Conference field enter "Planetary Defense"

This paper is "Did Biela's Comet Cause the Chicago and Midwest Fires?"

Hmm.. It is a 1995 paper: 15. Robert M. Wood, "Did Biela's Comet Cause the Chicago and Midwest Fires?", Society for Scientific Exploration Annual Meeting, 15-17 June 1995, Huntington Beach, California.

Aha. Google for "Biela's Comet" Chicago.

The idea is in a 1985 book, Mrs. O'Leary's Comet: Cosmic Causes of the Great Chicago Fire.

There also was a meteor shower associated with Comet Biela, but in 1871 of the October 9 Chicago fire the shower was around November 27.

Disney vs. Discovery

[tepples]

Holy Crap! Disney owns Discovery?

I don't think so. Here's a list of what Disney owns. Discover magazine is on there (scroll up to magazine titles), but it has no connection to Discovery Communications that I can find (scroll down to cable TV).

Eisner demoted!

Easily explained by radiation physics

[Tau Zero]

Buildings burned on a timescale of minutes, it was reported. Unlike your normal everyday fire, nothing was left half-burned. It also burned INTO the wind, which is contrary for usual fires. A guy in the New York Evening Post wrote, "buildings far beyond the line of fire, and in no contact with it, burst into flames from the interior". The other facts I noted may be referenced in The Annual Record of Science and Industry for1876, pg. 84 and History of the Great Conflagration Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, Illinois, 1871

If you have a large and hot enough fire, heat radiation will be able to raise material to its ignition temperature some distance away. (This can be observed in forest fires; trees will burst into flame when the fire has not yet reached them. I understand that houses in the path of forest fires often burn when radiant heat ignites things like drapes.) This would also explain why a building would burn in minutes: when every room facing the front of the fire is ignited more or less at once, and the subsequent flashover ignites the far side a short time later, the building is going to burn much faster than if the blaze started at a single point.

Not so Easily explained by radiation physics

[CoronalPendragon]

according to the fire marshall

"I felt it in my bones that we were going to have a burn...

We got the fire under control, and it would not have gone a foot farther; but the next thing I knew they came and told me that St. Paul's Church, about two squares north, was on fire"

That doesn't sound like radiation. If so, there is no way the fire marshal could have been so close, but possibly.

The huge stone and brick structures melted before the fierceness of the flames as a snowflake melts and disappears in water, and almost as quickly. Six-story buildings would take fire and disappear for ever from sight in five minutes by the watch....The fire also doubled on its track at the Union Depot and burned a half a mile southward in the teeth of the gale-a gale which blew a perfect tornado, and in which no vessel could have lived on the lake...

Strange, fantastic fires of blue, red and green played along the cornices of buildings. History of the Chicago Fire, pg. 85,86

The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat. Nothing exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare there is not to be found a piece of wood of any description, and unlike most fires, it left nothing half burned... The fire swept the streets of all the ordinary dust and rubbish, consuming it instantly.Ibid. pg. 119

So, while there are definately, some things that can be explained by radiation, it is by no means the whole story. Even the firestorms in Germany created by incendiary bombs and the atomic bomb in Japan left charred remains. Something different is going on here.

Re:Don't rule out the cow!

[RedWizzard]

I'm 90% sure it's a deliberate humor site;

You could have been 100% sure if you had spent 5 seconds clicking on the About The Uncoveror link:

The Uncoveror is a journal of political satire, news parody, and sometimes outrageous farce.