A massive fireball streaked across the sky over the southern central Russian producing blinding flashes and a sonic boom that shattered windows over a wide region.  More than 1,000 people were hurt, mostly by flying shards of glass.  At least two people suffered significant injuries.

It happened as many people had either just arrived or were going to work in the southern Ural region.  The flash ws followed by twin contrails extending across the sky and then by the powerful shockwave from the sonic boom.  The Russian Academy of Sciences says the flaming rock weighed about 10 tons, about the size of a bus.  Fragments of various sizes crashed to earth. 

One larger piece plowed into a Zinc plant in Chelyabinsk.  Zinc Commodity Futures briefly surged on international markets.  Another chunk punched a 2.5 foot crater in the ground, yet another melted an even larger hole in the ice on the frozen surface of a recreational lake nearby.

American Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson says the meteor is an incredible coincidence and most likely is not a precursor of or related to Asteroid 2012 DA14 which will make a close pass to Earth beginning with Australia and moving Northwest.  The two celestial bodies took significantly different paths.