* Astronomy

The chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794), together with the naturalist Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1732- 1789) and another chemist, Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt (1731-1799), published the results of the initial chemical analysis of a stony meteorite (L6) Luce', which fell in Sarthe on 13 September 1768 (Fougeroux et al. 1772). These data were first presented as an oral communication based on a manuscript that was preserved at the French Academie des Sciences (Academy of Sciences) in 1769. Because the Academie was reluctant to publish it in its Memoirs, their report was published independently, in a forerunner of the Journal de Physique (Poirier 1999). Lavoisier also believed the stone to be a 'gre's pyriteux' (pyrite-bearing sandstone) vitrified by a lightning strike
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