Tully and the Nest in the Lagoon
On 19 January 1966 a farmer named George Pedley drove his tractor past a lagoon near this Queensland town and, by his account, saw a grey craft about nine metres across rise out of the reeds. A circular patch of about the same size was left on the water, the reeds flattened and twisted into a spiral. The nest was photographed, the police took a statement, and several more such circles were found in the district within a week. Botanists explained them as a combination of a whirlpool and the root structure of the reed, which floats up as a disc when it tears from the bottom. The explanation is convincing — but outside Australia the case is remembered as the world's first circle, long before the fields of Wiltshire.
The Vashka and the Piece of Alloy
In 1976 a fragment weighing about 1.2 kilograms was found on the bank of the Vashka in Komi, which threw off a shower of sparks when struck. It was analysed at several Soviet institutes: an alloy of rare-earth elements — cerium, lanthanum, neodymium — with a trace of uranium, unusually pure and with a grain structure characteristic of powder metallurgy. The conclusions diverged. Some researchers wrote that industry of the day did not produce such a composition; others pointed to mischmetal, an alloy used in pyrotechnics and in lighter flints. The samples were dispersed among laboratories and no whole fragment now belongs to anybody. The find site is an ordinary stretch of taiga river with nothing to see.
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