Abstract
During the 18th century a number of museums of Europe discarded their meteorite specimens because they were considered to be relics from a superstitious past when people believed that rocks fell out of the sky. The embarrassment of being associated with such unscientific samples was more than some curators were willing to bear. At that time the scientific community, led by the French Academy of Sciences, had expressed its view against the existence of meteorites, and their opinion prevailed. Since then it has been well documented that rocks do fall out of the sky.