The Levelland UFO sightings

On the roads around the small town of Levelland, drivers reported a glowing object and dead engines through the night of 2 to 3 November 1957. Officials blamed ball lightning.

According to Wikipedia, two farmhands, Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz, phoned the Levelland police late on 2 November 1957. Saucedo told A. J. Fowler, the officer on the night desk, that they had seen a blue flash beside the road while driving four miles west of town. He said the truck's engine cut out and an object shaped like a rocket lifted off and came toward them.

The physicist James E. McDonald described that night to a House symposium on unidentified flying objects in 1968. In his statement, nine separate vehicles lost ignition within about two hours around midnight, and many lost their headlights too, as drivers met objects they put at 100 to 200 feet long, glowing red or blue.

McDonald noted that the story ran as national news until officials blamed ball lightning and damp ignition systems. In a history of Levelland, the Lubbock station KCBD recalls that the 1957 sightings drew attention across the country, with reports of burning objects overhead that killed car headlights and engines.