UFOs in the First Third of the 20th Century
General scientific and technological advances, showcased at world’s fairs mounted beginning in the mid-19th century, helped turn facets of hard science into popular science. Citizens, armed with new knowledge, became more aware than before of technology and the natural world. The greatest of the pre-1900 world’s fairs, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago, had a Westinghouse display with space devoted to the inventor Nikola Tesla (frequently invoked later in discussions of UFO propulsion); Tesla displayed an array of early AC devices that included motors, generators, visible high- frequency electrical discharges, and vacuum tubes illuminated by wireless transmission.
The Exposition’s celebration of electricity—an essentially invisible power source—made a particular impact on fairgoers.
Eyes Only: Selected UFO Sightings, 1900–1913
Mid-1901: In a yard at Bournbrook, England, a ten-year-old boy discovers a small craft, about five feet across, and a living humanoid.
October 28, 1902: As the Fort Salisbury sails the Gulf of Guinea, three crew members observe a light-festooned object some 650 feet long settle onto the sea and then descend beneath the water line.
August 9, 1903: Five witnesses at Argenteuil, France, use binoculars to observe a skyborne red object travel more than four miles in twenty minutes—too fast for any known balloon or other airship.
February 28, 1904: Three red, blindingly bright objects pass over the USS Supply in the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco. The dominant object is egg shaped; the other two are smaller, and spherical. After being observed by crew members for a full two minutes, the objects suddenly ascend into the clouds.
Note: Some accounts of the USS Supply’s sighting give the location at the Sea of Japan, off the eastern coast of Korea.
June 1904: Three members of a family observe a pair of blue-white objects hover six to ten feet above the ground near Rolling Prairie, Indiana. Note: Rolling Prairie is a well-known locus of ghost sightings. 1906: A “mystery meteor” performs elaborate aeronautical maneuvers above Syracuse, New York.
September 1906: Sackville G. Leyson, president of Emery County, Utah’s Society for Psychical Research, reports that he has traveled to Mars with his mind, meeting two diminutive tribes with, variously, webbed feet, cyclopean eyes, huge ears, and copious hair.
June 30, 1908: A mammoth fireball explodes above Tunguska, Siberia, setting the night skies aglow, smashing eighty million trees flat in a radial pattern, and killing hundreds of reindeer over nearly eight hundred square miles of forest. Trees at ground zero remain standing, but are stripped of branches and bark.
Forty miles from the site, at Vanavara, a man is tossed from his chair by a heat blast that makes him believe he is on fire. Note: Some UFOlogists regard the Tunguska event as the first recorded crash of an alien spacecraft. The more common, and generally accepted, conclusion is that the object was a 220- million-pound meteoroid (NASA’s term), measuring some 120 feet across (estimates range as high as six hundred feet), which screamed into Earth’s atmosphere at 33,500 miles per hour, heating the air around it to 44,5000 degrees Fahrenheit before exploding at an altitude of about 28,000 feet.
October 31, 1908: Men at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, see a black, spherical object fly over and then hover, to scan the ground with a brilliant beam of light.
April 24, 1909: Witnesses observe a light-colored ovoid fly over Florence Italy; two occupants are glimpsed inside.
June 16, 1909: At Dong Hoi, Vietnam, fishermen observe an illuminated cylinder hover above the village before it disappears into the sea. Note: Some accounts incorrectly give the place name as Dong Hui.
July 19, 1909: Residents of Oamaru, New Zealand, report strange flickering lights in the sky. Note: During July and August 1909, New Zealanders make nearly forty reports of mysterious flying objects; many accounts refer to “occupants.” July 23, 1909: An airship-like craft hovers for five minutes above a school in Kelso, New Zealand. One or more humanoids (accounts differ) is seen. Note: Drawings done later by the schoolchildren are similar in many details, but witness recollections cannot agree on whether the occupant(s) was seen on the ground or within the craft.
July 30, 1909: Two men witness the misty-morning descent of a domed disc near Gore, New Zealand. The craft gives off a yellow glow, and the clear dome allows the witnesses to discern two occupants. After executing a few low circles, the disc shoots upward and disappears.
July 31, 1909: A farmhand at Greenvale, New Zealand, observes a whirring, 150-foot-long airship fly rapidly through the early morning sky. The craft marks its passage with bright lights sited fore and aft.
January 12, 1910: A large, cigar-shaped object flying above Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama, illuminates both towns with a powerful beam of light.
January 19, 1910: The mayor and other town officials at Invercargill, New Zealand, observe a loudly chugging, cigar-shaped ship that hovers overhead. A humanoid appears at a bulkhead door and speaks in an unknown language. After a few moments, the door slides shut and the craft rapidly accelerates beyond the witnesses’ view.
May 29, 1910: At Sitges, Spain (near Barcelona), a photographer shooting a race car speeding around a curve during the Copa Catalunya (Catalan Cup) inadvertently captures a saucer-shaped object flying above and behind nearby trees. Note: This race is invariably misidentified in UFO literature as having taken place at an unidentified site in France, without month or day, or any hint of the driver’s identity. The photograph has survived because it shows the winning car, No. 5, a Lion-Peugeot driven by Jules Goux.
June 29, 1913: People gathered at a racetrack watch as an oddly elongated craft flying “at great height” passes over Lansing, Michigan, ascending as it goes.
