The Space Review - Since the first launches into space, rockets and parts of rockets have been crashing back to Earth. Fortunately much of the Earth's surface is covered in water, or inhospitable mountains, or deserts, or other places that are sparsely populated. Still, there is at least one documented case of a person being struck by a piece of a reentering object from space.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank two people for helping with this analysis. Brian Chambers is a colleague and a recent graduate of the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He is a Marine combat veteran who deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan once. He is also far better at writing C++ code than I am! Jason Post is a PhD candidate in Geosciences at Texas Tech University and is very good at analyzing and visually representing data. He has served his community as a volunteer firefighter and swiftwater rescue technician. Also, fish around the world fear him.