Rich reviews the facts known about the fall and detonation of the famous 1908 "meteor." That this was no ordinary meteor is born out by several curious data:
Tree-rings in the area show
an enormous acceleration of growth since 1908;
Inhabitants of this remote region stated that the reindeer suffered from mysterious scabs in 1908;
There is a slight but definite increase in the radioactivity of the surviving trees; and
Testimony indicates that the me-teor changed direction twice before impact.
The various theories of what really happened, from black hole to nuclear explosion, are listed without comment.
(Rich, Vera; "The 70-Year-Old Mystery of Siberia's Big Bang." Nature, 274:207, 1978.)