A man in Moscow looks at a computer screen displaying a picture reportedly taken in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, showing the trail of a falling object above a residential area of the city.
Worth revisiting the 1908 Tunguska meteorite strike that leveled nearly 1,000 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest land in Siberia. The Guardian has a great writeup with some archived newspaper clips in a piece published on February 8.
Don't believe everything you see on TV. Some news outlets are saying they have shots of the Chelyabinsk meteorite crater -- but they are actually showing the so-called "door to hell" in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert (pictured below):
Another video that caught the explosion:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on the event in Chelyabinsk:
"Everything must be done to assess the damage objectively. I spoke to the leadership of Chelyabinsk Oblast just half an hour ago. People are working. Thank God no large objects fell in populated areas, however there were still people who were injured. We need to think about how to help people -- not just to think about it but do it immediately."
"Chelyabinsk Oblast sustained the heaviest damage. As a result of the air wave and other damaging effects, more than 297 houses, 12 schools, several social-service facilities, and a number of industrial enterprises were damaged."
"It was recommended that a number of enterprises stop their work so that workers could go home to assess the damage and take measures to preserve the heat because a lot of windows had been broken. That was a priority task because the temperature was minus 5 Celsius during the day and a further drop in temperature was expected during the night."
The website for the city of Chelyabinsk has some decent pictures of damage from today's strike -- check them out here (text in Russian, of course).
One of the better dashcam videos out there. You can really see the burst and the arc of the meteor's trajectory:
Here's a picture (click photo to enlarge) of what appears to be the same building from earlier today (via RIA Novosti):
The latest numbers from Russia are that more than 400 people have been injured -- but with mostly minor injuries. Nine have been hospitalized.
Nurislam Aybulatov, a local Tatar activist in Chebarkul [map] tells RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service:
"Around 8 in the morning we saw a huge explosion above the Chebarkul lake. It felt like an earthquake. There are military bases around and sometimes we hear the arms explosions. First we thought it was the arms explosion. There was also smell of something burnt. There is no damage or injured people in our town."
Out of the many hundreds or thousands of videos from Russia, this one still sticks -- fast forward to :34 to hear the explosion.
