Talk:Oppenheim

Imaginary meteorite impact
The 'fact' that a meteorite impact caused the 1621 fire seems to be erroneous. It was added on March 2, 2009 to the German text, appearently during a good-faith expansion, and then translated to English on June 5, 2009.

I couldn't find any independent source of this bit of information, everything I found on the web was so similar in wording that it's likely a direct copy of the Wikipedia entry. Someone else already removed it from the German text over a year ago stating "Der Meteoriteneinschlag ist frei erfunden, da in der Stadtchronik kein derartiges Ereignis aufgezeichnet ist." (The meteorite impact is an invention, as the town chronicle records no such event.) and a third person reviewed it, so I'm not the only person who doesn't believe in this.

The 1621 fire occured during Spanish occupation (1620-1632). A hobby historian I talked to and who knows Oppenheim's history well opined possibly the fire was started by some bored, drunk soldier; things like that are not unusual in the chaos of occupation. And my grandmother, who has read virtually every book ever written about Oppenheim, but doesn't have internet access, had never heard of this meteorite thing. 62.80.22.187 (talk) 20:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)