Page:Miller - Flying saucers, fact or fiction.pdf/12



Flying Objects, "a 'flap' is a condition, or situation, or state of being of a group of people characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite yet reached panic proportions. It can be brought on by any number of things, including the unexpected visit of an inspecting general, a major administrative reorganization, the arrival of a hot piece of intelligence information, or the dramatic entrance of a well stacked female into an officers' club bar."

On the 22nd and 30th of November, 1896, a "cigar-shaped object with stubby wings"—apparently a reasonably static description —appeared and was viewed by thousands of residents over the areas of Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Chico, and other cities of Central California. But not until the following year did the phenomena receive nation-wide import and renown.

On March 29, 1897, Omaha reported a similar object, and Denver on the 20th.

Kansas City reported a "mysterious light" on April 1. "It was directed toward the earth, traveling east at a rate of sixty miles an hour," reported the New York Sun.

By April 9, newspaper accounts had been dispatched from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin. During the night of April 9-10, at Chicago until 2 a.m., "thousands of amazed spectators," said the New York Herald on the 14th, "declared that the lights seen in the northwest were those of an airship, or some floating object ... Some declare they two cigar-shaped objects and great wings." And this was five years before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight in a heavier-than-air craft. The Herald, of April 12, reported the "cigar-shaped" object and framework had been photographed by a Chicagoan.

On the afternoon of the 10th, an object of cigar shape and "with wings, and a canopy on top" had reportedly landed on a farm at Carlensville, Ill. When approached, however, it is supposed to have taken off and disappeared. A "dark object" is reported, by the New