The name Tswaing means "place of salt" in Tswana and the crater was also formerly known in English as Pretoria Saltpan crater and in Afrikaans as Soutpankrater.
The meteorite was probably about the size of an average house and it would have taken no more than 10 seconds to slam into the ground after entering the Earth's atmosphere, releasing the energy of about 100 Hiroshima atom bombs. Life within a 35-kilometre radius would have been wiped out.