Syracuse, New YorkJune 1960

On June 25, 1960, two pieces of hot, molten material fell near a home in Syracuse, New York at around 3:30 p.m. One piece struck the boot or shoe of a small child. Both objects showed signs of extreme heat damage. The smaller piece was roughly the size of a lemon and appeared metallic, though it was surprisingly light in weight. The larger piece measured about six inches long, four inches wide, and two inches thick, and seemed to be made of at least three different substances fused together. A resident turned the material over to personnel at Hancock Field, the local Air Force base.

Because the incident occurred around the same time that the Soviet Sputnik IV carrier vehicle was expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and break apart, the Air Force initially wondered whether the material might be leftover hardware from that spacecraft or even "moon dust" from space. Base personnel who had handled meteorites before did not believe these objects were meteorites, partly because they were far too light. Medical staff tested the material and found it was not radioactive.

The Air Force sent the samples to the Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for analysis. Scientists there performed emission spectroscopy (a test that identifies elements by studying how they glow when heated), infrared analysis, and X-ray diffraction (which reveals the internal structure of materials). The lab found that both pieces had the same chemical makeup: mostly calcium and silicon, with smaller amounts of magnesium, aluminum, iron, and other metals. The X-ray analysis showed the material had no crystalline structure, meaning it was amorphous glass-like substance. The final conclusion was that both samples appeared to be glass furnace slag, the waste byproduct left behind when glass is manufactured in an industrial furnace.

The Air Force marked this case as "unidentified" on its official record card, meaning the service could not explain the origin of the material through its normal investigation process. The full case file, comprising 12 pages as preserved by the National Archives, is reproduced below.