Anyone who listened to a police radio scanner Sunday night can be forgiven if they thought the sky was falling. The channels were abuzz with messages about UFOs, flying fireballs, and crashing aircraft -- all the result of a cosmic event that happens every spring. To poets, it was a night of falling stars; to astronomers, a meteor shower. But to many living in the area, it appeared to be a horrific disaster, at least according to police reports.At 8:13 p.m. Sunday, a Lincoln Street woman called Blackstone police to report she’d seen "a ball of fire the size of helicopter" disappear behind the tree line. Officers checked the neighborhood but found no crash wreckage.Woonsocket police then called the station, saying they’d received multiple calls about another falling "ball of fire" -- this one with a parachute attached. City police had also picked up reports from several Connecticut towns concerning fireballs and burning planes falling from the sky.Police in Lincoln and Cumberland then joined in the exchange, saying they’d also received calls about flaming missiles.

Eventually a Blackstone dispatcher contacted the regional office of the Federal Aviation Administration, to ask if any aircraft had crashed in the area.The answer was a firm "no." Locals who thought they’d witnessed air disasters had actually seen the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Every year in late April, the orbiting Earth passes through a trail of debris left behind by Thatcher’s Comet, which last traveled through the inner solar system in 1861.

View: Full Article | Source: zwire.com