CHINGUETTI, Mauritania

According to legend, an iron meteorite as big as a two-story house was known to the Bedouins. One of them showed the location to two French Legionnaires, and was fatally poisoned a few days later.

The Legionnaires noted the episode in a journal, but when they went to find the "meteorite", it was lost under the shifting sands of the Sahara, and was never seen again. Sadly, the mystery was recently solved, the long-lost "Chinguetti meteorite" turned out to be an enormous, natural bank of hematite. This meteorite specimen was an unrelated find from nearby.