Tiffin, OhioNovember 1957

A science teacher from Tiffin, Ohio reported seeing a flash of light while driving home from work on November 17, 1957. The following day, he returned to the area and found a spherical object in a field that he believed resembled the recently launched Soviet satellite Sputnik. He contacted local police, and the story received newspaper coverage in Toledo.

The Air Force's Project Blue Book investigated the claim in December 1957. Analysts obtained the object and examined it carefully. They found it was a copper-colored metal sphere about eight inches across with a single antenna. Inside were two thin copper shells bolted together with an American-made bolt. The interior contained a small radio bent into a "V" shape to fit inside. Heat had been applied to scorch and blacken the interior, while the outside remained shiny. A short piece of speedometer cable served as the antenna.

The Air Force concluded the incident was a deliberate hoax. All components were American-made and commercially available. The construction was crude but deliberate, designed to fool observers into thinking they had found an extraterrestrial or Soviet object during the height of Cold War space competition. No evidence in the file indicates who created the fake object or why it was left in the field.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 17 pages.