Llandrillo

The Berwyns and the Welsh Roswell

On the evening of 23 January 1974 the ground shook in the Berwyn mountains of north Wales and lights were seen on the hillside. People assumed an aircraft had come down; police, a nurse and mountain rescue climbed in the dark and found nothing. Over the years the story acquired military lorries carrying containers away, and the nickname the Welsh Roswell. Seismic records show a real earthquake of about magnitude 3.5 that evening, and the lights fit well with a bright fireball seen across northern Britain in the same minutes. The coincidence of two events in one evening produced everything else.