about two o'clock in the morning
The silver planet became the subject of universal discussion ; innumerable fantastic articles about it appeared in magazine sections of Sunday newspapers . And the astronomers of Earth turned their telescopes toward Venus with an interest they had never felt before . * * * * * Four days of expectant waiting passed by after the third meteor had fallen , while interest continued mounting at an accelerating pace . And then , at about two o'clock in the morning of the 18th , three great observatories , two in North America and one in England , recorded the falling of an extraordinarily large and unusually brilliant meteor that glowed with an intense , bluish-white light as it entered the Earth 's atmosphere . And , unlike most meteors , this one was not consumed by its intense heat , but continued gleaming brilliantly until it vanished below the horizon . Simultaneous with the falling of the meteor , the Earth was rocked by one of the worst quakes in history . Seismographs in all parts of the world recorded the tremors of the Earth , each indicating that the disturbance had occurred somewhere beneath the Atlantic ocean .