Hello All
One of the fun things searching through old archives you can get side tracked find events that have been forgotten to history. Some things became big news at the time but slowly as time moved on theses intriguing stories disappeared from public memory.
Mystery Airships are a class of unidentified flying objects best known from a series of newspaper reports originating in the western United States and spreading east during 1896 and 1897. Mystery airship reports are seen in some respects as a cultural predecessor to modern extraterrestrial-piloted flying saucer-style UFO claims.
Typical airship reports involved unidentified lights, but more detailed accounts reported ships comparable to a dirigible.Reports of the alleged crewmen and pilots usually described them as human looking, although sometimes the crew claimed to be from Mars is perhaps an example the length the hysteria went too.
It was popularly believed that the mystery airships were the product of some genius inventor not ready to make knowledge of his creation public.Thomas Edison was so widely speculated to be the mind behind the alleged airships that in 1897 he "was forced to issue a strongly worded statement" denying his responsibility.
Contemporary American newspapers were more likely to print manufactured stories and hoaxes than modern ones are and newspaper often would have expected the reader to be in on the fact that the outlandish stories were hoaxes.
Period journalists didn't seem to take airship reports very seriously as after the major 1896-1897 flap concluded the subject was not given further investigation, but allowed to very quickly drop off the cultural radar. The subject only received further attention when ufologists revived studies of the airship reports as alleged early UFO sightings.
The best-known of the Mystery Airship waves began in California in 1896.Other reports and accounts of similar airships came from others areas, generally moving east.Some accounts during this wave of airship reports claim that occupants were visible on some airships, and encounters with the pilots were reported as well. These occupants often appeared to be human, though their behavior, mannerisms and clothing were sometimes reported to be unusual.
* The Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Call reported the first sighting of the flap on November 18, 1896.Witnesses reported a light moving slowly over Sacramento at an estimated 1,000 foot elevation.Some witnesses said they could see a dark shape behind the light. A witness name R. L. Lowery reported that he heard a voice from the craft issuing commands to increase elevation in order to avoid hitting a church steeple. Lowery added "in what was no doubt meant as a wink to the reader" that he believed the apparent captain to be referring to the tower of a local brewery, as there were no churches nearby. Lowery further described the craft as being powered by two men exerting themselves on bicycle pedals. Above the pedaling men seemed to be a passenger compartment, which lay under the main body of the dirigible. A light was mounted on the front end of the airship. Some witnesses reported the sound of singing as the craft passed overhead.
* One witness from Arkansas-- allegedly a former state senator Harris -- was supposedly told by an airship pilot (during the tensions leading up the Spanish American War) that the craft was bound for Cuba, to use its "Hotchkiss gun" to "kill Spaniards".
* In one account from Texas, three men reported an encounter with an airship and with "five peculiarly dressed men" who reported that they were descendant from the lost tribes of Israel; they had learned English from the 1553 north pole expedition led by Hugh Willoughby.
* February 2, 1897, the Omaha Bee reported an airship sighting over Hastings, Nebraska the previous day.
* An article in the Albion Weekly News reported that two witnesses saw an airship crash just inches from where they were standing. The airship suddenly disappeared, with a man standing where the vessel had been.The airship pilot showed the men a small device that supposedly enabled him to shrink the airship small enough to store the vessel in his pocket.A rival newspaper, the Wilsonville Review, playfully claimed that its own editor was an additional witness to the incident and that he heard the pilot say "Weiver eht rof ebircsbus!"The phrase he allegedly heard at the airship landing site is "Subscribe for the Review" transliterated backwards.
* On April 10th, 1897 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a story reporting that one W. H. Hopkins encountered a grounded airship about 20 feet in length and 8 feet in diameter near the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri.The vehicle was apparently propelled by 3 large propellers and crewed by a beautiful nude woman and a bearded man, also nude. Hopkins attempted with some difficulty to communicate with the crew in order to ascertain their origins. Eventually they understood what Hopkins was asking of them and they both pointed to the sky and "uttered something that sounded like the word 'Mars.'"
* An April 16th 1897 a story published by the Table Rock Argus claimed that a group of "anonymous but reliable" witnesses had seen an airship sailing overhead. The craft had many passengers.The witnesses claimed that among these passengers was a woman tied to a chair, a woman attending her, and a man with a pistol guarding their apparent prisoner. Before the witnesses thought to contact the authorities the airship was already gone.
These are just some of many newspaper reports from the time, Interesting enough New Zealand and Australia had a out break of reports. Later in 1910 England had began to report sightings.
What was the truth of these reports?
Many were over exaggeration by newspapers and individuals and much has be discounted , but there are reports of more creditable witnesses seeing these objects.
Who and what was behind the sightings?
To answer that we have to look to see if the technology was available in 1896-1897?
The following pictures is of French, American and British airships between 1900 and about 1910.
Today we can look back at our ancestors and cringe at the thought that people believed in men from mars etc. But if you look back at the influences of the day. Books such as Jules Verne and HG Wells etc.. You may well see the link between imagination and popular belief in collision course with developing technology of the day. We cannot think what a mid western farmer would of thought when he looked up into the sky and saw there strange Airships.
But we can look at our own belief systems and for a moment and pause for reflection, How much of our beliefs at present in 100 years from now will cause our descendants to cringe in horror at our ideas on the world around us?
Hardluck
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« Last Edit: May 15, 2010, 06:46:08 am by hardluck »
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