A meteorite weighing 127 kg fell from the sky on November 7, 1492, near Ensisheim in Alsace, creating a one-meter-deep hole in a wheat field. The event was observed up to 150 km around, and a loud noise was heard around noon. The chronicles place the event between 11 a.m. and noon on that date. A fireball was seen across the sky of the Upper Rhine, and the explosion was heard for dozens of leagues. A young boy is said to have been the only direct witness and guided the inhabitants to the hole. Curious people immediately began to detach fragments. A local magistrate saved the meteorite from destruction by transporting it to the city before the arrival of King Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, who was approaching with his army. According to historian Ursula Marvin, the survival of the stone thus depended on this decision by one man. Pamphlets were printed in Basel in the weeks following the event, in Latin and in German verse, authored by Sebastian Brant, the poet of The Ship of Fools. These pamphlets presented the meteorite as an omen of victory and urged Maximilian to wage war against the French. The king saw it as a sign of divine favor and ordered the stone to be kept in the parish church of Ensisheim. When he won the anticipated battle, the reputation of the block grew even more. Over the years, strange details were added to the accounts, including an old inscription attached to the stone that noted everyone had spoken of it without anyone saying enough. The Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in 1493, preserves an image of it. The meteorite remained in the church until 1793, when French revolutionaries transferred it to a new national museum in Colmar. There, many pieces were taken. Fragments are now found in more than 150 museums around the world, according to a study devoted to the meteorite. The block on display in Ensisheim now weighs 56 kg with its intact vitrified fusion crust, a thin layer formed by the heat of its passage through the atmosphere. Marvin's study, published in 1992 in the journal Meteoritics, mentions a specimen of 56 kg with wide areas of fusion crust. Analyses were also conducted in Paris and Berlin. Marvin describes the meteorite as the oldest observed meteorite fall in the West for which pieces have been preserved. It fell a few weeks after Christopher Columbus's first voyage. Ensisheim is located about 25 km south of Colmar. On November 7, the fall will be 534 years old.