"Then came the night, the first missile approached Earth. It was thought to be an ordinary falling star....?

Question

....but next day there was a huge crater in th middle of the common, and Ogilvy came to examine what lay there."

What did Ogilvy find in the crater? and what was the fictional historic event that began ten nights ago?

Answer 1

H G Wells War of the Worlds,and he found a cylindrical object.

Answer 2

"But it's something more than a meteorite.  It's a cylinder - an artificial cylinder, man!  And there's something inside."

The Martian Invasion of Earth (a.k.a., "The War of the Worlds")

Answer 3

From H G Wells' War of the Worlds...

Inside the crater was a cylindrical object which was found to be metallic and hollow, it's found to contain a martian.

Think that 10 days before is when the first missile was fired from mars. (some kind of super-gun idea?) This was the start of the martian invasion.

"It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth.  This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve.  He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."

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Very interesting when you find out that we have found "fallen stars"/meteorites which do seem to be pieces of rock that have been blasted out of mars perhaps by volcanoes, or more likely by large impacts, from which some of the ejectii made it's way to Earth.

Wonder if Wells knew about the Shergotty meteorite. It was found/retrieved about the right time...

Answer 4

war of the worlds?