On May 26, 1974, Terry Mathew Betz, a 21 year-old pre-med student, along his mother Gerri and his marine engineer father, Antoine, were inspecting the damage caused by a brush fire that had raged across an 88-acre swathe of woodland that they had recently acquired on marshy Fort George Island, which is nestled just east of Jacksonville, Florida.
At first the trio found nothing out of the ordinary, but before their expedition was over they stumbled across a peculiar highly polished, metal orb that was just under 8-inches in diameter. The only delineating mark that the three could find on the eerily unblemished object was an elongated triangular shape stamped into its surface.
Stunned, Terry and his parents wondered whether or not they might have stumbled across some kind of downed NASA or maybe even Soviet satellite. Perhaps they even speculated that the friction induced heat of this object plummeting from its orbit might have had something to do with the fire that had ravaged the property, but none of them could find any signs of an impact crater or any indication of collision or heat damage on the gleaming metal globe.
The trio then surmised that it might be an "old fashioned canon ball, which someone had silver plated," as a souvenir. Intrigued by this extraordinary find, Terry decided to heft the 22 lbs., bowling ball sized sphere into their car and take it back to their castle-like home, where he showed the unusual object to a 12 year-old relative named Wayne. He was just as perplexed by the mystery object as the rest of the family had been...read more>>>...
