On April 18, 1962, an unidentified flying object , most commonly referred to by witnesses as a "fireball" or a "meteor", crashed in Nevada after a near cross country flight. The event received coverage in newspapers, was documented by Project Blue Book, and the object was tracked on radar by the Air Force to a specific area in Nevada, before it vanished from the radar screen, in the same area noted by witnesses in Las Vegas, just before an apparent explosion, followed by a "column of brilliant smoke."