What the Hell Was That, Cleveland?

At 8:57 a.m. on St. Patrick's Day 2026, a seven-ton rock from space exploded over Northeast Ohio.

Houses shook. Windows rattled. A guy on a Cleveland sidewalk genuinely wondered if it was the end of time. A woman in Strongsville blamed snow thunder. The 911 centers across four counties lit up like a video game nobody signed up to play. And in a bar in Valley City - directly below the point where the asteroid detonated - the owner reassured his customers that there were no aliens, and nothing was going to hamper St. Patrick's Day.

He was right. The kegs stayed tapped. The party continued. And Northeast Ohio did what it always does when the universe throws something ridiculous at it: cracked jokes, poured drinks, and started figuring out how to put it on a t-shirt.

Meanwhile, in the fields of Medina County, meteorite hunters from Connecticut, South Carolina, and Baltimore were converging on a small town called Sharon Center, searching for fragments of something four and a half billion years old. A man who quit his career to hunt space rocks full-time drove through the night and searched for an entire day before finding a piece at sundown.

This is not a science book. This is the story of what happened to the people of Northeast Ohio on the most memorable St. Patrick's Day in history - told with the humor, heart, and self-deprecating stubbornness that defines this region.

From the author of the Infamous Moments in Cleveland Sports series, this is the first book in the Infamous Moments in Cleveland History series.