Mount Pleasant Township

Kecksburg and the Acorn in the Woods

On 9 December 1965 a bright fireball crossed several states, and in the woods outside this Pennsylvania village, according to the people who live there, something came down. Witnesses described an object the size of a car, shaped like an acorn, with a band of markings around its base. By evening the military had cordoned the woods off; by morning they announced they had found nothing. The official answer is a meteor, and astronomers did track that fireball from Ontario into Pennsylvania. A meteor does not explain a cordon. In 2005 NASA acknowledged that its files on the episode were missing. A replica of the acorn has stood in the village since the 1990s — put up for a television programme, and never taken down.