Word: sylacauga
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...beat Folsom was another significant pointer to Alabama's hardening mood: State Representative Charles W. McKay Jr., 35, lawyer, World War II bomber navigator, chairman of the Sylacauga White Citizens' Council, who authored the state's nullification resolution...
...only meteorite known to have hit a human (TIME, Dec. 13) is back in Alabama, after brief sequestering by the Air Force. The woman it bruised, Mrs. Hulitt Hodges of Sylacauga, is feeling much better, and so is her husband. "Lord have mercy" he cried, when the black stone came home. "Let me put my hands on that thing." But he has not yet sold it, as he hopes to, for more than its weight in gold...
Suddenly, across the noonday sky from west to east, swept a brilliant fireball. It left a long trail of white (some observers said black) smoke, and it flew so high that it was seen almost simultaneously in Greenville, Miss., Montgomery, Ala. and Atlanta. Over Sylacauga it exploded with a boom like thunder (some said a series of booms). A schoolboy in Montgomery, 50 miles away, insisted that the blast almost knocked him off his bicycle...
...thought it was a burning airplane. Acting on this theory, Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery sent 40 airplanes crisscrossing Alabama, looking for the wreckage. When Air Force authorities learned that the black stone had scored a hit on Mrs. Hodges, they sent a helicopter, which landed in the Sylacauga schoolyard...
Wise Up. Next morning the crowds were still milling through the star-punctured house, and telegrams and phone calls were streaming into Sylacauga. Scientists begged the Hodges not to damage the meteorite. Lawyer Love, asking $5,000 for it, reported that agents of a Muncie, Ind. munitions manufacturer were flying to Sylacauga to outbid everyone else. The Smithsonian in Washington was interested too, but was not talking serious money. Mayor Howard declared that the meteorite would eventually come to rest in the State Museum of Natural History. Hewlett Hodges felt otherwise. "The mayor," he said, "had better wise...