On the evening of January 23, 1974, people around the Berwyn Mountains in North Wales heard a loud bang, felt the ground shake and saw a bright light in the sky. Some saw lights moving on the mountainside, and police went up to look for a crashed aircraft.
Ufologists later claimed a spacecraft had come down and the military had secretly recovered it, and some tabloids dubbed it the "Roswelsh incident".
The British Geological Survey's records show a magnitude 3.5 earthquake at 8:38 p.m., felt across North Wales and as far as Merseyside, and a bright meteor was seen over Wales and northern England at about the same time. The lights on the hill were most likely poachers' lamps. Ministry of Defence files released later reached the same conclusion.