The Wold Newton Meteorite: An Extraordinary Stone and the Birth of a Superhero

In a remote part of North-East England called the Yorkshire Wolds, an incident took place on Sunday 13th December 1795 that not only became talking point of late 18th century London society but also gave birth to a modern literary legend. However, as is so often the case, the real facts associated with this event are just as intriguing as the fictional tales that subsequently arose from it!

Wold Newton Fiction: Radioactive Tarzan

In the early 1970s, the American science fiction author Philip José Farmer (1918 - 2009) was engaged writing the ‘biographies’ (as if they were real-life people) of two well-known fictional characters, namely Tarzan and Doc Savage (the latter is better known in the US than the UK). Farmer was toying with the idea of whether they and similar superheroes of pulp and popular fiction were in any way related since, if they were real, their paths would have inevitably crossed in life. In addition, Farmer was intrigued with how these characters originally gained their superpowers.

Book covers for Tarzan novels, 1912 and 1914 (Public Domain)

His suggestion, explained in Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973), was that in 1795 a radioactive meteorite fell near Wold Newton, with the radiation causing genetic mutations to the occupants of two passing coaches, which were passed on to their descendants in the form of extremely high intelligence and strength, along with an exceptional capacity and drive to perform either great good – or evil.

According to Farmer, 19 individuals:

“were riding in two coaches past Wold Newton... A meteorite struck only twenty yards from the two coaches... The bright light and heat and thunderous roar of the meteorite blinded and terrorized the passengers, coachmen, and horses... They never guessed, being ignorant of ionization, that the fallen star had affected them and their unborn.”

The people in the first coach were said to be John Clayton, the third Duke of Greystoke, and his wife Alicia, nee Rutherford, sister of the eleventh Baron Tennington; the eleventh Baron himself, George Edward Rutherford and his wife Elizabeth Cavendish; Honore Delagardie and his wife Philippa Drummond; and Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife Elizabeth Bennett. (And you thought the latter two were just characters in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice!)