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Andrew Ellicott Douglass witnessed the Leonids. It was really a matter of looking up and recording what he saw such was the magnitude of the event.

The Leonids being the name of a meteor shower and was the first time to had been observed and recorded in North America.

early observations

	That is not to say it was the first time recorded.

That is not to say it was the first time recorded (I mention this just in case Hollywood are thinking of producing a true story on the subject).

The Leonid shower had been mentioned in Arab and Chinese chronicles from about 900AD.

Douglass was an American born astronomer who would later become an assistant to Percival Lowell.

Douglass was on a ship of the Florida Keys when he saw the shower and wrote in his journal that the, 'whole heaven appeared as if illuminated by sky rockets...I was in constant expectation of some of them falling on the vessel.'

the bigger picture

	The Leonids is actually an annual event.

The Leonids is actually an annual event occurring between November 14 and 20 with a peak on 17. The display is greatly improved approximately every 33 years with the appearance of the Tempel-Tuttle comet (discovered independently by French astronomer Ernst Tempel and American Horace Tuttle). The German astronomer Heinrick Olbers had determined this cycle by observation.

With the reappearance of the comet the Leonids can produce up to several thousand meteors an hour for observation.

	ON THIS DAY...
	Wills, Romance of the Heavens

It was one of those events Douglass was observing.

The return of the Tempel-Tuttle event in 1833 could well have been the inspiration for organized study of meteors.