Kapustin Yar, the Russian Roswell
The account
A silver, cigar-shaped object was supposedly shot down over the base, and the Soviets secretly kept its wreckage.
What investigators found
There is no confirmed document about the crash; the base was a secret rocket testing range, a likely source of strange lights.
The story
Kapustin Yar is a rocket testing range created by the Soviet Union in the late 1940s on the steppes near the Volga River. The first Soviet missiles based on German technology were launched there. Because it was secret, the site became fertile ground for legends and earned the nickname of Russia's Area 51.
The best known story says that in June 1948, Soviet fighters encountered a silver, cigar-shaped object over the base and that, after a dogfight, the object crashed and was taken to underground facilities. The account circulated decades later in books and television programs, without verifiable documents. Historians note that rocket launches, military tests and Cold War secrecy readily explain how the rumors arose.