ScienceAlert has a story of an unexpected valuable find. A farmer in Michigan didn't realize that his 22 pound (10 kilogram) doorstop was a rare meteorite. Back in 2018, David Mazurek of Grand Rapids, Michigan asked Mona Sirbescu, a geologist at Central Michigan University (CMU), about the rock he'd found about 30 years ago...
How the meteorite came into Mazurek's possession is a story in itself.
According to Sirbescu, when Mazurek bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan in 1988, he was shown around the property by the previous owner, and saw a large, strange-looking rock being used to prop open a shed door.
When Mazurek asked the outgoing owner about the rock, he was told the doorstop was actually a meteorite.
The man went on to say that in the 1930s he and his father had seen the meteorite shoot down at night onto their property, "and it made a heck of a noise when it hit".
The next morning, the pair found the crater left by the object, and dug the meteorite out of the newly formed ditch. It was still warm, they said.
The craziest bit? The man told Mazurek that, since the meteorite wasa part of the property, it would now belong to him.
And so Mazurek kept the space rock for 30 years, and continued using it as a doorstop – except for the occasions when his kids took the rock to school for show and tell.