'Unidentified Smelly Object', 8-Jan-97

What was reported

At about 11 am Mrs Moyo of Tsmalyemba in the Matobo District of southern Zimbabwe saw a football-sized blue object fall from the sky and land about 100 m from her home. It gave off a pungent smell and melted into a blue-green slime. Police took a sample but the Bulawayo Met Office, without examining it, said it was a small meteorite, so the police destroyed the evidence. Hind, drawing on William Corliss's anomaly books, suggests it could have been waste from an aircraft toilet, which would explain the smell, but stresses that without the sample nothing can be settled. She revisits the case because of a 1999 British report of ice falling from a plane.

What Hind made of it

Possibly aircraft toilet waste, but without evidence nothing is certain.

Explanation offered
Met Office Bulawayo: small meteorite (unexamined); Hind: aircraft toilet discharge

In their words

• but of course, without the evidence, nothing is certain.

Cross references

• UFO Afrinews Nos 16 & 17
• Daily Mail, 7 May 1999 (Hertfordshire ice fall)
• William Corliss anomaly books

Connected

• Foul-Smelling UAP? (Matobo blue object)Case 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.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 21 (January 2000), spread 21

Nearby

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