https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
Something extra interesting about this is the number of videos that recorded it due to the prevalence of car dash cams. This helped scientists quickly reconstruct what happened and is amazing footage to have of such a rare event.
For days I looked for any information in the news about it and never found anything reported. I never quite knew what it was, and nobody else really believed by description, until all the dashcam videos about this incident showed up on the internet.
Not the shockwaves, but things damaged/knocked over by the waves. If you were standing in a field, the shockwave would do nothing to you. It was harmless. But if you are standing beside a poorly-designed glass building, pieces are going to fall off that building. This was Russia. I would expect that other countries, with different building practices, might suffer far fewer casualties.
If that's the case then the poles would have a smaller cross-sectional area than equatorial regions.
Maybe the poles would be a good place to build evacuation shelters. Getting there in a hurry could be an issue.