Kecksburg

On 9 December 1965 a fireball crossed six states and Canada, and around this village in Westmoreland County people reported wisps of blue smoke, vibrations and a thump, and said something came down in the woods. State police and Air Force personnel went in with Geiger counters. Early newspaper reports say the area was sealed off on the order of Army and State Police officials; the searchers reported finding absolutely nothing. In 2005 NASA said its experts had examined metallic fragments and concluded they came from a Soviet satellite, but that the records of those findings had been lost in the 1980s. A reporter sued under FOIA and in October 2007 a court ordered NASA to search for the missing documents. Outside the fire station stands an acorn-shaped prop, about the size of a Volkswagen, left over from a 1990 Unsolved Mysteries reconstruction.