Wonders in the Sky (64 page)

19 January 1793, England, exact location unknown
Opaque body

A long opaque body was seen stationary over the center of the sun by many witnesses.

 

Source:
Gentleman's Magazine
&
Historical Chronicle
63 (1793).

366.

28 December 1793, Bucharest, Romania
Unexplained “moon”

In the evening, a man who was dining in Bucharest about 7:30 P.M. reported that “the moon has accomplished a miracle,” making a journey along the sky in half an hour.

 

Source: Ion Hobana and Julien Weverbergh,
Les Ovni en URSS et dans les Pays de l'Est
(Paris: Robert Laffont, 1972), 222. The authors cite
Biblioteca Academiei Române,
BAR ms. rom. 2150, fol. 1110.

367.

20 August 1794, Balasore, India
Phenomenon in the heavens

At 7:45 P.M. a number of witnesses saw an oversized meteor, brighter than any of the planets. As it descended “it made short and frequent pauses, at which times it appeared far more brilliant than while it was in motion.”

The object was lost to sight behind the hills, but not for long: “We expected to have seen no more of it: but in about two minutes after we observed it again, ascending above the hills, where it balanced and waved several times, in a horizontal direction, North and South: it then sank again, illuminating the hills in its declination as before. It rose and fell a second and a third time, with little variation in its movements, after which we saw it no more and all around was darkness.”

 

Source:
The Star
(London, England), Saturday, March 14, 1795, issue 2049.

368.

27 January 1795, Quangxi prov., Linggui area, China
Crash of a large maneuvering light

A large “star” in the Southeast rose and fell three times, followed by another one that “crashed in a village.”

 

Source: Shi Bo,
La Chine et les Extraterrestres
, op.cit., 44.

369.

12 Oct. 1796, New Minas, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Airships

Fifteen “ships” seen in the air moving east, with ports on the side. A man aboard one ship extended his hand.

The incident is mentioned in the five-volume diary of loyalist merchant and Judge Simeon Perkins (1734-1812):

“A strange story is going that a fleet of ships have been seen in the air in some part of the Bay of Fundy. Mr. Darrow is lately from there by land. I enquired of him. He says that they were said to be seen at New Minas, at one Mr. Ratchford's by a girl about sunrise and that the girl being frightened called out and that two men that were in the house went out and saw the same sight, being fifteen ships and a man forward of them with his hand stretched out. The ships made to the eastward. They were so near that the people saw their sides and ports. The story did not obtain universal credit, but some people believed it. My own opinion is that it was only in imagination as the clouds at sunrise…”

 

Source: C. B. Fergusson, ed.,
The Diary of Simeon Perkins 1790-1796
(Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1961), 430.

370.

18 January 1798, Tarbes, France
Astronomical anomaly

Astronomer D'Angos observed an object passing in front of the Sun. It was “a slightly elliptical, sharply defined spot, about halfway between the centre and edge of the Sun, which passed off about 25 minutes afterwards.”

 

Source: “Observations of the transits of intra-mercurial planets or other bodies across the Sun's disk,”
The Observatory
29 (1879): 136.

371.

10 Sept. 1798, Alnwick, Northumberland, England
Cylinder

A particularly graphic case of a shape-changing UFO was reported by a Northumberland schoolteacher, Alexander Campbell, and a friend. According to
The Annual Register
for 1798 when the object first appeared high up in the south-western sector of the sky it seemed to be no bigger than a star, but as it came closer it “expanded into the form and size of an apothecary's pestle.”

“It was then obscured by a cloud, which was still illuminated behind; when the cloud was dispelled, it reappeared with a direction south and north, with a small long streamer, cutting the pestle a little below the centre, and issuing away to the eastward. It was again obscured, and, on its re-appearance, the streamer and the pestle had formed the appearance of a hammer or a cross; presently after the streamer, which made the shaft to the hammer, or stalk to the cross, assumed two horns to the extreme point, towards the east, resembling a ford. It was then a third time obscured, but when the cloud passed over, it was changed into the shape of two half moons, back to back, having a short thick luminous stream between the two backs; it then vanished totally from their sight. It is observable that every new appearance became brighter and brighter, till it became an exceedingly brilliant object, all the other stars, in comparison, appearing to be only dim specks.”

The sighting lasted some five minutes in all.

 

Source:
Inforespace
28, quoting from
The Annual Register
83 (London, 1798).

372.

July 1799, Bruges, Belgium
Unexplained maneuvering “meteor”

An unusual “meteor” crosses the sky towards the south and returns north, then makes a 45-degree turn to the northwest, proving it was no natural object, and certainly not a meteor.

 

Source: T. Forster, “A Memoir on Meteors of Various Sorts,”
Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science,
July-Dec. 1847.

373.