actions of Sullivan on that day should be scrutinized after the O'Leary family was exonerated in 1997. Anthony DeBartolo reported evidence in two articles of the Chicago Tribune (October 8, 1997, and March 3, 1998, reprinted in Hyde Park Media) suggesting that Louis M. Cohn may have started the fire during a craps game. Following his death in 1942, Cohn bequeathed $35,000 which was assigned by his executors to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The bequest was given to the school on September 28, 1944, and the dedication contained a claim by Cohn to have been present at the start of the fire. According to Cohn, on the night of the fire, he was gambling in the O'Learys' barn with one of their sons and some other neighborhood boys. When Mrs. O'Leary came out to the barn to chase the gamblers away at around 9:00, they knocked over a lantern in their flight, although Cohn states that he paused long enough to scoop up the money. The argument is not universally accepted. An alternative theory, first suggested in 1882 by Ignatius L. Donnelly in Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, is that the fire was caused by a meteor shower. This was described as a "fringe theory" concerning Biela's Comet. At a 2004 conference of the Aerospace Corporation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, engineer and physicist Robert Wood suggested that the fire began when a fragment of Biela's Comet impacted the Midwest. Biela's Comet had broken apart in 1845 and had not been observed since. Wood argued that four large fires took place, all on the same day, all on the shores of Lake Michigan (see Related Events), suggesting a common root cause. Eyewitnesses reported sighting spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke, "balls of fire" falling from the sky, and blue flames. According to Wood, these accounts suggest that the fires were caused by the methane that is commonly found in comets. Meteorites are not known to start or spread fires and are cool to the touch after reaching the ground, so this theory has not found favor in the scientific community. Methane-air mixtures become flammable only when the methane concentration exceeds 5%, at which point the mixtures also become explosive, a situation unlikely to occur from meteorites. Methane gas is lighter than air and thus does not accumulate near the ground; any localized