☄️ Money making meteorites | Bulletin #154

This week: secrets behind Area 51 👽

May 20, 2026

In 1992, Michelle Knapp paid $400 for a used Chevy Malibu, only to have a 4.4 billion-year-old meteorite fall from the sky and pierce the trunk while she was inside her house. The fireball was caught on 16 different videos by cameras filming East Coast high school football games, making it the most-documented meteorite fall in history. Knapp ultimately sold the car for $25,000 and the meteorite for $50,000 - not bad for a $400 investment!

SUPPORTING COMMUNITY MEMBERS

AWA Ambassador Ludwig Favre has been nominated for a prestigious Hasselblad Masters award in the architecture sector! Please take a second and show him some love by voting for his entry, and enjoy some of other great work on display.

THIS WEEK IN AWA AWESOMENESS

🖼️ Our favorite museums
👾 Extraterrestrial exploration
🥖 The Louvre’s storied history
📝 Wes Anderson in academics

May 18th was International Museum Day - an annual celebration that's been convincing people to spend sunny Saturdays indoors since 1977. Check out some of our favorite museums and museum stories!

Little A'Le'Inn 📍 Rachel, Nevada, USA 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

ALIEN PARKING ONLY

Denied, classified, and surrounded by motion sensors, Area 51 spent 70 years as the government's best-kept secret… and then the internet got to meme-ing.

The Louvre 📍 Paris, France 📸 Callicles

FROM FORTRESS TO PEOPLE’S PALACE

Built to keep invaders out, the Louvre spent 600 years as a fortress and royal treasure chest before a revolution handed it to the people in a single decree.

COLOR IN THE FILMS OF WES ANDERSON

Our friend and architecture extroidinaire Louis Harrison, just completed a dissertation doing what most of us only do informally: obsessively analyzing why Wes Anderson's films look so impossibly good. The project extracts Pantone palettes directly from scenes across his filmography and maps them onto architectural elevation drawings of real buildings in Newcastle. Grand Budapest Hotel pinks on Georgian facades. Asteroid City teals climbing Victorian shopfronts. Equal parts color theory and genuine love for the work.

Cowabunga, dude! We’ve got an gnarly Secret Link prize this time around. Find the Secret Link and you may win an AWA Surf Cap. Happy searching, and hang loose 🤙🏻