Southern Africa Unexplained

Case · UFO Afrinews No 16, July 1997

Foul-Smelling UAP? (Matobo blue object)

1997 · Tsmalyemba, Matobo district, west of Gwanda, Matabeleland, Zimbabwe

What was reported

Late one January morning Mrs Moyo heard a noise like a huge bird diving from the sky, only louder, and saw a blue object about the size of a football strike the ground some hundred metres from her house and burst on impact. Villagers sent a youth for the police, and a ZBC reporter who happened to be nearby filmed the remains. The object gave off a pungent smell and melted into a blue-green slime. Police took a sample but, told by the Bulawayo Met Office that it was a small meteorite, destroyed it. Hind suspected 'blue ice' from an aircraft toilet, then received cuttings on small icy comets that bombard Earth, but neither explains the smell.

What Hind made of it

Not a spacecraft-type UAP but unidentified. Most likely frozen aircraft-toilet disinfectant, or possibly one of the small 'snowball' comets in recent press reports; regrets the police destroyed the evidence.

Explanation offered
Meteorite (Met Office); blue ice from aircraft toilets (Corliss); small icy comets (New York Times 29 May 1997, Time 9 June 1997)

In their words

  • The object gave off a pungent smell and melted into a blue-green slime.

    Cynthia Hind, spread 22

  • So there you are: loo blue, or meteorites? What a pity the police were so quick to destroy the evidence!

    Cynthia Hind, spread 22

Cross references

  • New York Times National, 29 May 1997
  • Time Magazine, 9 June 1997
  • William Corliss anomaly books

Connected

  • 'Unidentified Smelly Object', 8-Jan-97Case fileHind follow-up

    Same 11:00 fall of 8 January 1997 at Tsmalyemba, same Mrs Moyo, same Met Office 'small meteorite' call given without examining the sample, same destroyed evidence. Hind reopened it in 1999 after a Hertfordshire ice fall, moving from 'blue ice or snowball comet' to 'aircraft toilet waste, but nothing can be settled'. One event, two records.

  • More Lights in the Sky, Zimbabwe: EsigodiniCase fileNamed person

    Sipho Moyo (Esigodini, April 1992) and Mrs Moyo (Tsmalyemba, January 1997) share only the commonest Ndebele surname; the places are 23 km apart and the events five years apart. A name collision to be discounted, not a link.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 16 (July 1997), spread 22

Nearby

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