Yet the descent of meteorites from the heavens was not always regarded as a forewarning of bad fortune. On November 16, 1492, a 279-pound meteorite fell at Ensisheim in Alsace, not far from the battle line separating the armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Maximilian, the leader of the Empire’s forces, commanded that the fallen stone be carried to his castle. There a formal war-council was held to determine what the strange event could mean. [Illustration: COURTESY OF AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Drawing of Andromedid meteor shower, November 27, 1872.] The Emperor and his councillors decided that the fall of the meteorite at such a time and place was an omen of divine favor which meant good fortune to the cause of the Holy Roman Empire. After breaking off two small pieces of the stone, one for the Duke of Austria and one for himself, the Emperor forbade further damage to it. He also gave orders that the stone be hung in the parish church in Ensisheim for all to see. In this way, the Ensisheim stone became the very first meteorite of witnessed fall to be preserved down to the present day—and all because of the superstition of a famous military leader. The discussion to this point makes clear that in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, meteorite falls were considered as startling and disturbing events, which frequently were interpreted in strange and mistaken ways. But the fact that meteorites actually did fall from the heavens was not questioned. As the so-called “Age of Reason” opened, a curious change in attitude toward meteorite falls took place. At the very time that knowledge in general increased, men of learning began to deny that meteorite falls occurred at all! The scientists of the French Academy, in particular, were very positive on this point. Since the era was one in which all Europe sneezed if “la belle France” had a cold in the head, it was a trying time not only for the early meteoriticists, but for all who had the nerve to insist they had seen rocks fall from the sky. By the end of the 1700’s, the authorities had studied the evidence relating to meteorite falls and had completely rejected it. They said that there was no “proof” whatever that “stones fell from the heavens.” These early scientists openly sneered at people who claimed that they had seen meteorites fall. It was felt that the spectators of such events either had merely been “seeing things,” or had surely been reporting light and sound effects connected with nothing but ordinary thunderstorms. When confronted with the “fallen” masses themselves, the authorities often refused to examine them, or if they did, insisted that these masses were only rocks that had been struck by lightning. Such were the opinions of learned men around the close of the eighteenth century.