KECKSBURG

Opening

At about 4:44 p.m. on 9 December 1965, a brilliant fireball streaked across the sky, seen from Ontario and Michigan to Pennsylvania and beyond. Witnesses reported sonic booms, falling hot debris and small grass fires. In the village of Kecksburg, about 30 miles south-east of Pittsburgh, residents said something had come down in the woods. Firefighters, state police and military personnel came to search.

Some locals later said they saw an acorn-shaped metal object about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, with strange writing like hieroglyphics round its base, and an army flatbed truck carrying something away under a tarpaulin. The official answer that night was that nothing was found. Forty years later NASA admitted it had lost its records.

Timeline

9 December 1965, about 4:44 p.mThe fireball is seen across at least six US states and Ontario. Hot metal is reported falling over Michigan and northern Ohio.

That eveningA Kecksburg woman reports seeing something fall into the woods and smoke rising. The volunteer fire department, state troopers and, by many accounts, military personnel arrive. Local newspapers report the area being sealed off.

Later that nightThe state police and Air Force say a search found absolutely nothing. Fire chief Ed Myers says he searched until 10 p.m. and saw nothing.

1966 to 1967Writer Ivan Sanderson, working from witness reports, calculates the object was visible for about six minutes and travelled at roughly 1,000 mph, far too slow for a meteor, and that it seemed to change course. A 1967 paper in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, using photographs and seismograph records, concludes it was a meteor descending steeply toward the area near Windsor, Ontario.

1990Unsolved Mysteries opens its season with Kecksburg, reconstructing the acorn with a full-size prop. More than fifty residents, including Myers, sign a petition trying to stop the broadcast, saying the acorn-and-hieroglyphics version had only surfaced shortly before, decades after the event.

2003A Sci Fi Channel documentary features John Hays, who says that as a boy he saw a flatbed truck leave the site carrying something the size of a Volkswagen.

December 2005NASA says experts examined metal fragments at the time and found they were from a Soviet satellite, but that the records were lost in the 1980s.

26 October 2007After investigative journalist Leslie Kean sues under the Freedom of Information Act, a court orders NASA to search properly. NASA acknowledges that two boxes of documents from the period are missing. The records belonged to its "Fragology" files, kept on recovered pieces of space hardware, mostly Soviet.

Key figures

Ed Myers, the 1965 fire chief, searched the woods and has always said there was nothing there.

Researcher Stan Gordon has spent decades collecting the testimony of witnesses who say there was. Ivan Sanderson did the first investigation.

Leslie Kean forced NASA's admission about the missing records. Space historian James Oberg suggested, from 1991, the Soviet Venus probe Kosmos 96, which re-entered the same day.

Physical and documentary trail

What survives: newspaper reports from 9 and 10 December 1965, the 1967 trajectory study, Project Blue Book's record of the fireball, witness testimony gathered from 1990 on, NASA's 2005 statement and the FOIA court record.

Still missing: any recovered object, any photograph of one, and NASA's two lost boxes.

I was all over the woods and didn't see a thing... I stayed until 10 p.m. and didn't see anything.

Things you might not know

• The acorn lives at the fire hall. The full-size replica built for Unsolved Mysteries is displayed near the Kecksburg volunteer fire station.
• The town throws a UFO festival. Kecksburg holds an annual UFO festival, run by the fire company, every July.
• The Soviet probe doesn't fit. Kosmos 96 did come down on 9 December 1965, but tracking data put its re-entry hours earlier and over Canada.
• Some link it to a Nazi bell. The acorn's shape and "writing" have been tied to the rumoured German Die Glocke project, a theory with no documentary support.
• Debris fell over hundreds of miles. Grass fires and fragments were reported in Michigan and Ohio, far from Kecksburg.

Competing explanations

A meteor. The astronomical study's reading: a bright fireball that came down far to the north-west, near Lake Erie, and only looked close to people in Pennsylvania. The searchers found nothing.

A satellite or space debris. NASA's own later statement. The obvious candidate, Kosmos 96, is ruled out by timing, and no other has been identified.

A recovered object. The witnesses who describe the acorn, the cordon and the truck. Their accounts mostly surfaced 25 years later and are disputed by others who were there.

A story that grew. Residents including Myers say the dramatic version was built after 1990, once television made it famous.

Later life of the case

Kecksburg is "Pennsylvania's Roswell", celebrated every summer, and a recurring subject of FOIA requests. NASA's lost boxes are the detail that keeps it alive.

Finding

A bright fireball was seen over a huge area on 9 December 1965, and the best scientific reconstruction puts it far from Kecksburg. The crash-and-recovery story rests on testimony that emerged decades later and is contradicted by the fire chief. NASA's claim of a Soviet satellite, followed by lost records, has never been explained.

What still will not resolve: what NASA examined in 1965, and what was in the two missing boxes.