CHICAGO (WGN) — Some Chicagoans thought they saw a meteor Monday night, but what they actually saw was a publicity stunt.
The Chicago Tribune reports that at about 6:30 p.m., three Red Bull AIr Force skydivers, with flares shooting from their shoes, drifted toward North Avenue Beach, the company said.
The stunt was promoting the “Red Bull Art of Can” exhibit in Millennium Park.
Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society, told the Tribune that the organization received 9 reports from the Chicago area about the “fireball.” He said they initially thought the object was a meteor or some sort of “space jun,” but since their weren’t more reports, they determined it was something man-made.
About an hour before the Red Bull stunt, the Tribune reports the American Meteor Society received more than 200 reports of a bright object streaking across portions of the eastern seaboard. Those sightings stretched from Maryland to North Carolina to Georgia, and even as far west as Ohio, and the society said that object was definitely a fireball — not a stunt.
