December 9, 1965: Pennsylvania’s Roswell: Kecksburg UFO

A Brief History

On December 9, 1965, citizens of Detroit and Eastern Michigan, Ohio, and Western Pennsylvania (a total of six states plus Ontario) were treated to a fireball in the night sky, as mysterious then as it is now.

Digging Deeper

The fireball coursed from West to East dropping hot metallic fragments on the way, until in the Pittsburgh area people heard a sonic boom type noise and residents of Kecksburg, PA reported seeing an object crash in the woods about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh.

Described as an acorn shaped object about the size of a VW Bug, witnesses claimed a sort of hieroglyphic band of markings around the base. The Army was reported to have shown up and sealed the area around the crash site, removing the object with a flat bed truck.

Despite numerous witnesses, including volunteer firemen, the government denied removing any object and claimed no object could be found. The local newspaper reported on the incident the next day, and described how the Army and State Police had sealed the area. The paper referred to the object as a UFO.

The government, of course, claimed the object had been a meteor and no trace of a crash site was found. The meteor story was stuck to by the government until 2005 when NASA reported the object had really been a failed Soviet space probe called Kosmos 96 that had burned up upon reentry. Not surprisingly, the actual records of the government investigation “disappeared” in the 1990’s. (And you wonder how conspiracy theories start!)

Many investigations into this incident have been made over the years by various journals and even the Sci Fi (now Sy Fy) cable television channel and History Channel’s UFO Hunters and Ancient Aliens shows. Even the Science Channel got in on the act with their Dark Matters show looking into the Kecksburg UFO. The ambiguous nature of response by the US government and missing information leaves plenty of room for speculation about what the object really was.

The Kecksburg fire station is adorned by a large model of the object looking like an upside down acorn made of tan cement, complete with hieroglyphics. The model was made for an episode of the television show, Unsolved Mysteries.

Question for students (and subscribers): Obviously the people around Kecksburg take this incident seriously, but how about you? Do you believe the object was a meteor, a falling man made space probe, or something else? Let us know what you think in the comments section below this article.

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