How Two Families Escaped East Germany in a Homemade Hot Air Balloon

(via Listverse) At 2:40 a.m. on the morning of 15 September 1979, constables Walter Hamann and Rudolf Golkel of the Bavarian State Police were patrolling the country roads outside the West German town of Naila, about six miles from the East German border in Upper Franconia, when they spotted a faint flickering light moving slowly across the starry sky. Hamann and Golkel couldn’t tell what it was, but they estimated that the light was some 5,000 feet high. As they watched, they saw the light descend to the ground and then extinguish. The constables immediately steered their car towards the site where they believed the mysterious object had landed.