It was a brilliant light, too enormous for an inflatable’ – this is the way one paper depicted a UFO locating, one of the handfuls that confused a country.
We use your sign-up to better understand you and provide content in ways you’ve agreed to. Based on our understanding, this may include advertisements from us and third parties. Any time, you can unsubscribe. More information In the past few weeks, a number of flying objects have been observed in US airspace. They were quickly recognized as Chinese balloons because they were gently floating in the high atmosphere, a space that is difficult to navigate just outside the visible atmosphere and just before the exosphere, the layer that separates the rest of the atmosphere from space. Washington quickly destroyed the inflatables, at destinations over The Frozen North and the central area US.

However, despite the fact that the story has gripped the world and sparked speculation that it could usher in a novel form of aerial warfare, the United States is no stranger to enigmatic aircraft flying through its airspace.

The United States was consumed by UFO fever from 1896 to 1897. Newspapers from Massachusetts to Minneapolis, Ohio to California all confirmed sightings of a “mysterious airship,” according to reports.

The initial sightings, which began in California in 1896, were later referred to as the “Great Airship Wave.”

A story that Readex reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 23, 1896, was picked up by numerous US newspapers. A portion of the titles read, ‘All in the Air: “Airship a Fact: A Mysterious Airship Puzzles the People of California,” The Secret Has Been Learned by a Maine Son, and An Airship: Californians who live in Sacramento, Are Blessed to receive an Interesting Sight; A Realization of Aerial Navigation.

What made the reports so baffling was not such an excess of the way that there was a carrier yet that anything was flying by any stretch of the imagination.

In the latter part of the 19th century, the United States was struck by the Great Airship Wave. The Great Airship Wave dazed towns and cities across the country (Image: The United States of America has shot down a number of suspected Chinese spy balloons. In his 1990 report, “The Airship Hysteria of 1896-97,” Robert E. Barthomolew described previous attempts to fly an airship as “crude and erratic at best,” despite the fact that the Wright brothers did not fly an airship successfully until 1903.

A more extended news report, distributed in the Duluth News Tribune, on November 23, 1896, read: ” Sacramento residents who were awake on Monday morning claim to have witnessed a fast-moving airship passing over the city around 1 a.m.

Some people simply reported seeing a bright light, while others went so far as to report seeing a flying cigar-shaped object and hearing voices from it. Oakland residents also claim to have witnessed the same thing a few nights ago.

Things get more complicated here. Restless to demonstrate to their perusers that the secret carrier wasn’t a lie, a significant number of the papers incorporated a meeting with who they portrayed as the aircraft’s innovator’s lawyer, a Mr George D. Collins.

On November 23, 1896, the Sioux City Diary cited him as saying: ” California will have the honor of presenting the world with a successful airship, which is a fact that is undeniably true. I am acting as the inventor’s attorney because I have been aware of the situation for some time.