Page 14 - 200808 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - August 2008

14 In The Beginning - June 24 1947 14 In The Beginning - June 24 1947 In The Beginning reporters Bill Bequette, put the story on the bodies appeared. They were heading toward the In The Beginning Associated Press wires. Within days, as similar sun and changed from dark brown to black as sightings erupted around the country, an they got closer to the sun. As they approached, anonymous headline writer coined the phrase, they lost speed but sped up again after passing "flying saucers." But that name was not entirely informant of the sun. They moved in a straight original. On January 25, 1878, a Texas procession across the sky to the eastern horizon. newspaper, the Denison Daily News, remarked According to Transactions of the Swedish on a local event that had taken place three days Academy of Sciences (1808), "The earlier. On the morning of January 22, farmer phenomenon lasted uninterruptedly, upwards of John Martin noted the swift passage, through two hours, during which time millions of the southern sky, of something like a "large similar bodies continually rose in the west, one saucer." The newspaper said, "Mr. Martin is a after the other irregularly, and continued their gentleman of undoubted veracity and this career in exactly the same manner." strange occurrence, if it is not a balloon, Some of the balls fell out of the sky, deserves the attention of our scientists." several landing not far from K. G. Wettermark, There were as many as 18 other secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. sightings of strange flying objects in the Pacific Seen just before they hit the ground, they Northwest that same June 24. For example, that resembled, "those air-bubbles which children morning prospector Fred M. Johnson had use to produce from soap suds by means of a spotted five or six "round, metallic-looking reed. When the spot, where such a ball had discs" about 30 feet in diameter and 1,000 feet fallen, was immediately after examined, above him. He focused a telescope on one and nothing was to be seen, but a scarcely Kenneth Arnold reported “flying saucers” saw that it had tails or fins (unlike those Arnold perceptible film or pellicle, as thin and fine as a over Mount Rainier, Washington on June would observe a few hours later). Fr the cobweb, which was still changing colors, but 24, 1947. His report brought unidentified duration of the sighting - close to a minute - soon entirely dried up and vanished." flying objects into the worldwide Johnson's compass needle spun wildly, stopping The balls in the air continued their consciousness. only after the discs headed off to the south. passage until all disappeared in the east. [] Actually, sightings of silvery discs had been going on since April 1947, when a U.S. The date was June 24, 1947, a Tuesday; Weather Bureau meteorologist and his staff had MR. MOORE GOES TO the time, just before three o'clock in the tracked a large, flat-bottomed ellipsoid as it shot MR. MOORE GOES TO afternoon. Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and from east to west over the skies of Richmond, WASHINGTON WASHINGTON fire-control-equipment salesman from Boise, Virginia. Sightings of similar objects took place Idaho, was flying over the Cascade Mountains the next month in Oklahoma, Colorado, searching for the remains of a lost C-46 for Tennessee, Georgia and New Jersey. These Driving near Montville, Ohio, late on which a $5,000 reward was offered. incidents went unnoted in the local press until the evening of November 6, 1957, Olden Moore Arnold never found the missing aircraft, after Kenneth Arnold's sighting opened the way was startled to see a glowing disc, 50 fret high but what he did see put his name in newspapers to publication of such stories. and 50 feet in diameter, come down along the all over the world. He had just made a 180- By the late 1940s Air Force instigators roadside He got out of his car and watched the degree turn over Mineral, Washington, when a had taken to calling such things "unidentified landed UFO for the next 15 minutes. It was still bright flash of light startled him. During the flying objects." This was meant to be a neutral there when he left to get his wife, but it was next 30 seconds, Arnold frantically searched the term, but skeptics complained that the words, gone when they returned, Police and Civilian sky for its source - he was afraid he was about "flying" and "objects" implied both craft and Defense investigators found both "footprints" to collide with another airplane. Then he saw intelligent guidance. Everyone could agree, and radioactivity at the site. another flash to his left, toward the north. When though, that this phrase was better than the silly- A few days later Moore disappeared. he looked in that direction, Arnold spotted nine sounding "flying-saucers," which described When he resurfaced, he would not say where he objects, the lead one at a higher elevation than only some of the aerial oddities people were had been. But in private conversations with the rest, streaking south over Mount Baker reporting in the United States and around the ufologist C.W. Fitch, Moore claimed that Air toward Mount Rainier. Watching their progress world. Some of these phenomena looked like Force officers had flown him to Washington, from one peak to the next, he calculated their big metal cigars or fire-spewing torpedoes; D.C., and hidden him away while they speed at 1,700 miles per hour. Even when he others were spheres, triangles, or V shapes; and repeatedly interviewed him. Toward the end of arbitrarily knocked 500 miles off that estimate, many were simply bright lights zigzagging his stay the officers showed him a UFO film, Arnold was still dealing with an impossible across the night sky. apparently taken from a military plane and said speed figure. For the next 45 years, UFOs would be UFOs seemed to be of interplanetary origin. The objects, darting in and out of the the focus of ceaseless controversy, wonderment, Moore then signed a document swearing him to smaller peaks, periodically flipped on their weirdness, fabrication, derision, mystification secrecy. [] sides in unison. As they did so the sunlight and, once in a while, serious investigation. reflected off their lateral surfaces - thus To this very day, "unidentified flying explaining the flashes that had first caught his objects," for the majority of sightings, remain, attention. Arnold wrote later, "They were flying "unidentified." diagonally in an echelon formation with a larger gap in heir echelon between the first four and BUBBLES FROM OUTER the last five." The lead object looked like a dark crescent; the other eight were flat and disc- SPACE shaped. Arnold estimated that the chain they comprised was five miles long. After two and a Not all unidentified flying objects are half minutes, they disappeared, heading over potential alien spacecraft. Some are much Mount Adams. The age of unidentified flying stranger. Consider, for example, the strange objects (UFOs) had begun. phenomena that passed over Biskopsberga, Sweden, early in the 19th century. "FLYING SAUCERS" It was a cloudless afternoon on May 16, 1808, and a hard wind blew from the west; the The next day Arnold his story to two reporters sun over the village suddenly grew dim. At the for Pendleton's East Oregonian. One of the western horizon a great number of spherical