Westall and Two Hundred Schoolchildren
On the morning of 6 April 1966 pupils and teachers at two schools in the Melbourne suburb of Westall — between two and three hundred people by various counts — watched a grey-silver disc cross the sports field, drop behind the trees by the grasslands, and lift away a few minutes later. It is the largest sighting by number of witnesses in Australian history. The pupils were assembled that day and told not to discuss it; several of them said for decades afterwards that men in uniform had come to the field. Explanations from a weather balloon to a test aircraft have been offered. In 2013 a playground shaped like a flying saucer was built in the park where it came down.
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.
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first.