An 885-foot-long asteroid will speed by the Earth tonight at 27,000 miles per hour, but what's the tie-in with the Winter Olympics? Well, it was "almost exactly" a year ago when another chunk of space rock actually exploded in the sky over Russia—and that's where Sochi is, in Russia!

Last night, shortly after 7:50 PM, a meteor lit up night skies on the East Coast, shining as bright as the moon for about ten seconds. The meteor appeared as "a thin streak of blue-greenish-white," with the most sightings being reported in Maryland.

Ratings-starved CNN is changing its focus, and that's cool. They hadn't been committed to straight news reporting for some time, but really hadn't fully made the leap into baseless sensationalism until just a few weeks ago when "flesh egg" Jeff Zucker took the reins. Their 24-hour coverage of the "shit cruise" was exemplary sensationalism, even going so far as to compare a group of inconvenienced vacation-ers to victims of Katrina.

Between the meteor (meteorite? meteoroid? meteorologist?) explosion over Russia and a close-flying asteroid that doesn't respect personal space, it wasn't a particularly relaxing Friday for the planet Earth. Things got even weirder last night when Bay Area residents spotted a mysterious fireball streaking across the sky.

A "ball of fire"—likely a meteor—appeared over the U.S. Southeast tonight! You may be reassured to know that the volunteer fire department of Copiah County, Miss., "searched for whatever it was but didn't come up with anything."