The Comettes are a normal French family, with a home in Paris’ southern suburbs.  While they were on their summer holidays, a chondritic meteorite fell from the sky onto their roof, smashing through a tile and embedding itself into the insulation.  Some time later, when the family noticed that the roof had started leaking during the rain, they called in a contractor who was astonished by what he’d found.  He said “You’d have to be superman to break a roof tile like that. It must be a meteorite.”

The blackened rock was found and shown to a mineral scientist who confirmed that they had indeed had the extraordinary luck to be struck by a piece of debris from the birth of the Solar System.  Although collectors will pay very large sums for even tiny fragments of meteorite, the Comette’s have decided to keep theirs as a keepsake.  “It’s the history of life on Earth that fell in my garden,” said Mrs Comette, “a bit of fascinating space history that we know nothing about.”