Mass sighting of a shiny metallic sphere

The event occured when I was a child.  I came out of my home with my mother to visit my aunt up the street.  As we stepped out of the house, we noticed right away in the north sky (direction we were walking towards) a static shiny metallic silver sphere.  It was a clear, sunny day so that this object seemed out of place and as a result there were lots of people on the street pointing and gazing at this object.  My mother and I did not stop walking, and on the way to my aunt's house, my mother ran into a friend, who was also looking at this strange object.  He happened to have a pair of binoculars, and my mother took a look, and so did I.  No more details of the object could be discerned through the binoculars, though it seemed to give certain off colours as light reflected off it, kind of like a disco ball.  Now, after a half hour of looking at this seemingly still object, we went over to my aunt's house.  We walked back home later on that night, and the object was no longer visible.  I had been thinking about this object all day and later on that night we saw a news report on it on TV.  Apparently the same object had been and filmed not only in my home city of Valparaiso, but also in Santiago, Punta Arenas, Buenos Aires and other cities and towns in Chile and Argentina all within one day.  They showed clip of the object, which looked the same as the one I had witnessed.  It was said on the news that it was not a weather balloon as many that had seen the object suspected, and that it had been witnessed by thousands of people.  Nothing else was made of this event, and I never heard of it again.  Even though I was a child at the time, I can still remember the object looming in the north sky, and I'm sure that it could not have been explained by any natural phenomenon.
Date is approximate.  PD