The statement, "Stars Fell on Alabama," which decorates Alabama car tags, has stimulated much curiosity. Actually, most of us don't remember any such event to explain the statement.
On the night of Nov. 12-13, 1833, most people in the Muscle Shoals area went to bed as usual. A few who went to bed about midnight might have noticed an unusual number of shooting stars streaking across the sky. By 3 o'clock in the morning, the number of meteors or shooting stars had increased to tens of thousands. They entered the earth's atmosphere traveling about 10 miles per second, leaving a long trail of burning material behind.
The light given off by the burning meteors was constant -- so much light that many people thought morning had come early and the sun was rising. Even the roosters started crowing to greet the dawn. Other livestock thought it was morning. Cows headed for the pasture, and chickens left their roosts in search of food. The people who were awake soon had their families up looking at "the great fireworks display in the sky."
One person in Huntsville wrote that everyone was up at 3 o'clock looking at the "streaming meteors." The shooting stars seemed to come out of the Southwest and traveled in a northeasterly direction. Some seemed to be falling, but so far as is known, none actually hit the ground. This great meteor shower covered all the eastern part of the United States from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. But Alabama seems to have been affected by the display of heavenly fireworks more than other parts of the country. The light from the shooting stars continued until the sun rose, hiding the stars with its brightness.
Human reactions to this startling phenomenon were as strange as the event itself. A few people were impressed. But many were terrified. Some believed a horrible catastrophe was about to happen. A large number of people thought the world was coming to an end and tried to get right with God. Some knelt and prayed, often confessing sins that startled their earthly hearers. Numerous travelers hurriedly packed their bags and started home to be with their families "during the final hours."
The Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Church was meeting in Pulaski, Tenn., at the time. Several dozen ministers were present. Some, especially the younger ministers, believed the meteor shower was announcing the second coming of Jesus. Many conference participants prayed, while others, believing the world was coming to an end, prepared to return to their homes. One of the conference leaders, Dr. Robert Paine, president, teacher and minister at LaGrange College in Franklin County, had been born 30 years earlier in the midst of a similar meteor shower. This timely arrival led him to study astronomy. He was thus able to relieve many fears and bring order out of the chaos among the Methodist ministers.
At that time in history, even the best-educated men did not really understand what was going on. Newspapers had a field day offering explanations. One theory was that the shooting stars were caused by "sulphureous vapours" exhaled from the bowels of the earth. Another related theory claimed the shooting stars were "combustion of inflammable air, kindled by electricity."
With the coming of daylight, the shooting stars and the great light they gave off seemed to disappear. Normal conditions existed the next night, but Alabamians certainly had not forgotten the night "Stars Fell on Alabama." The meteor shower was often discussed by Alabamians as late as the 1890s. There is evidence that the memory continued much longer. In 1934, Carl Cramer wrote a popular book titled "Stars Fell on Alabama", about the people of Alabama and their way of life. A short time later, Mitchell Parish and Frank Perkins wrote and published a ballad with the same title, thus further connecting Alabama with the great meteor shower of 1833.
Showers of meteors have been known since ancient times. The shower that appeared over Alabama was a recently formed stream, the Leonids, which reappears every 33 or 34 years but seldom with the brightness of 1833. The Leonid meteors are associated with their parent comet, Temple-Tuttle.
Kenneth R. Johnson, Emeritus Professor of History, University of North Alabama