Sometimes nature surprises us by transforming an otherwise ordinary day into something extraordinary. This happened for Nancy Hempstead, who rose early as usual on the morning of November 14, 1833 to do her chores. She dressed by candle light, pulled on her cape and hood, and tiptoed quietly out of the house while the rest of the family still slept.

As Nancy set up her milking stool and pail in the open barn, she looked up at the sky and saw, to her astonishment, that the heavens were filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shooting stars. What was even more amazing, many stars were falling to earth right there in the yard between the barn and the house. By the time she’d finished miking the cow, the spectacle was over. Nancy must have struggled to find adequate words to tell her waking family what she’d just witnessed.

I read this account some time ago in a memoir by Mary Lydia Branch and was reminded of it during the recent eclipse. Mary was a direct descendant of Joshua Hempstead, the man who’d built the Hempstead House in New London in 1678. She grew up there in the 19th century and had heard her Aunt Nancy reminiscing about this unforgettable experience.

What Nancy had seen weren’t stars, of course, but meteors emanating from a comet in an annual celestial display known as the Leonid Showers. Every 30-some years, the shower becomes a storm as it did in 1833. It’s estimated that there were as many as 150,000 meteors per hour shooting through the heavens. The show could be seen across the entire United States east of the Rocky Mountains. A New London newspaper, The Gazette, reported on sightings from Florida to Nova Scotia, and speculated that the possible origin of the meteors might perhaps be volcanoes or the moon.

The magnitude of the spectacle and the fact that there was no science available to predict it inspired awe, delight and fear. Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, welcomed it joyfully as a sign of the Second Coming of Christ. Others shared Smith’s opinion that Judgment Day was at hand, but with considerably more trepidation. One enslaved girl in Tennessee recounted how her owners, apparently panicking that their damnation was imminent, had hastily gathered their slaves together and told them where and to whom their relatives had been sold.

The event even contributed to scientific knowledge. Yale physicist and astronomer, professor Denison Olmstead, wrote a letter to a New Haven newspaper describing what he’d seen that night and soliciting the observations of other witnesses. The article was picked up by newspapers across the country, and soon he was bombarded with responses. Olmstead’s study of the data led to his recognition as the founder of meteor science.

It’s good to live in a time when astronomical phenomena are better understood and predictable. We can share with others our wonder at the universe, whose majesty transcends the power of words.