From: Bruce Weaver, Greensboro, NC, dakota3h [at] msn.com Date: Subject: My name is Bruce Weaver and following is my vivid recollection of that amazing event on the morning of November 17, 1966. My view was from Bradenton, FL: I was a precocious 14 year old freshman that fall and was expectant of the 1966 Leonid meteor shower. I lived in East Bradenton (FL) and had the advantage of a bookmobile visiting our neighborhood each week. When one of the librarians recognized my avid interest in astronomy she began selecting books for me from the main stacks. One if them, which I adored at the time for its charts, was called, The Telescope and the World of Astronomy by Marvin Riemer. To this day I have retained hand copied notes I made in the fall of 1966, reproducing some of the data in certain reference charts. On page 170 of the book was the "Table of Important Meteor Showers." Under the remarks section for the Leonid shower was this prediction: "big display 1966." In 1987 I ran across a copy of this book at a used book store. Following a scanning of its contents to confirm it was THE volume, I snapped it up. Looking out my bathroom window that expectant November morning quickly demonstrated that meteors were falling. I hastily set up outside with my lawn chair faced east. My crude method of recording the big event was to make a mark for each meteor sighting. I had a flashlight with its red shield held down on my spiral notebook. I would turn on the flashlight briefly to record the sighting and then switch it back off. Glare from the flashlight was minimal. The whole event was absolutely phenomenal! I witnessed two bolides that morning in which, when they exploded, it was the equivalent of daylight for a brief instant. Incredible! The first exploded behind me. I followed the second one down and it exploded front and center to my eastward vantage point. It was so exciting at times that occasionally a bright star out of the corner of my eye caught my attention from time to time--an obvious false alarm. My totals for about one outstanding hour was 278 meteors! I retained that page with its scratches, from my spiral notebook (by the way, I wondered what would happen the next day--11/18--and counted 35 meteors in roughly the same time period). Unfortunately as the storm seemed to be intensifying, daylight began intruding. However, I will never forget one further remarkable, lingering phenomena that I have not seen duplicated since. In the vicinity of the upper part of Virgo and just south of Denebola a large bright cloud appeared to be growing in intensity. At the time I wondered if I was seeing the zodiacal light. In retrospect I am convinced that this bright area of enormous size I viewed as a mysterious parting accompaniment was the meteoric cloud from which the ultimate swarm of fireworks later exploded, perhaps highlighted by the early morning sun. A footnote: one of my friends, Gary Fleming, was president of our Southeast High School astronomy club (and member of the Gulf Coast Astronomical Scoiety or GCAS) and had also observed the meteoric spectacle. While in his high school classroom that morning he was looking out the window and witnessed a meteor falling in broad daylight. Utterly captivated, he instinctively stood up in awe. His teacher, oblivious to the extraordinary circumstance this upperclassman was responding to blurted out, "Gary! Sit Down!"