The Kecksburg acorn
The account
An acorn-shaped metal object with strange markings crashed in the woods and was hurriedly hauled away by the military.
What investigators found
The official version speaks of a meteor. The theory of a Soviet probe is disputed. NASA said, in a lawsuit, that it had lost the records.
The story
On the afternoon of December 9, 1965, a fireball streaked across the skies of several U.S. states and Canada. Residents of the village of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, said they saw something fall in the woods. Witnesses described an acorn-shaped object, the size of a car, with symbols resembling hieroglyphs.
According to residents, soldiers cordoned off the area and left with something covered on a truck. The official explanation was a meteor. Decades later, a journalist sued NASA for documents, and the agency reported that some of the records had been lost. Today the town displays a replica of the acorn, built for a TV show.