The Arrival Of A Chunk of Mars

Wired:

In the early morning of July 18^th, 2011, something unusual happened in eastern Morocco.  The sky lit up, glowing and changing colors.  They couldn’t possibly have known it at the time, but a few well-placed nomads were experiencing something that’s only happened a handful of times in recorded history: They were witnessing the terrestrial arrival of a piece of Mars.
The Meteoritical Society’s bulletin reads like a police report:

“At about 2 am local time on July 18, 2011, a bright fireball was observed by several people in the region of the Oued Drâa valley, east of Tata, Morocco.  One eyewitness, Mr Aznid Lhou, reported that it was at first yellow in color, and then turned green illuminating all the area before it appeared to split into two parts.  Two sonic booms were heard over the valley.  In October 2011, nomads began to find very fresh, fusion-crusted stones in a remote area of the Oued Drâa intermittent watershed, centered about 50 km ESE of Tata and 48 km SSW of Tissint village, in the vicinity of the Oued El Gsaïb drainage and also near El Ga’ïdat plateau known as Hmadat Boû Rba’ ine.”

It’s unclear what “several people” were doing awake at 2 AM, but their unusual morning was just the beginning.  In the coming months, meteorite prospectors, collectors, and scientists would travel the world in a high stakes quest to acquire a most unusual chunk of rock.

The story details how a meteorite hunter tracked it down and verified it came from Mars.  I didn't know it would be such a big money object.