The Big Lake Park fireball

On 17 December 1977 three people in Council Bluffs, Iowa, saw a reddish fireball fall into Big Lake Park, where firefighters found molten metal.

On Saturday evening, 17 December 1977, three young people heading for a shop on North 16 Street saw a reddish object falling vertically from perhaps 500 to 600 feet up. Trees hid it, and then came a bluish-white flash and a pair of fiery arms that rose over ten feet, as though something had struck. They went into Big Lake Park and found an orange glow with bluish crystal at its heart, sitting on a dike roughly sixteen feet off the road.

Fifteen minutes later Jack Moore, an assistant fire chief, reached the scene. The thing still glowed, a layer of molten metal about four inches deep spread across six feet by four. He called it a kind of metal that would neither break nor bend. Airport and Air Force officials, at Eppley and Offutt, were telephoned and denied any aircraft had come down. Samples were later analysed and found to be a plain high-carbon steel, the type common in manufacturing. The local heritage society considers a hoax the likeliest explanation while noting open questions.