In December 1933 Major W. A. Pover, who was then ‘Iraq Public Works Department Executive Engineer of the Mosul and Kirkuk Liwas, showed the writer a portion of a meteoritic stone. This had been in his office doing duty as a paper-weight since it was brought to him by two of his men shortly after its fall.

At that time Major Pover was in camp, supervising the erection of the permanent steel road bridge that spans the river valley some five kilometres upstream of Tauq village. His men told him that the meteorite fell in the middle of the night; it was likened by those who saw it to the moon falling, and people were awakened by the jolt of its fall. When the morning came, some of his men went out to seek it, and they in fact found it. They described it as about two and a half feet in diameter, and they broke it up with a sledge hammer, when the fragments were eagerly collected by those who happened to be present. A portion they themselves took to Major Pover.