Mystery airship

[6] Initially, most journalists of the period did not appear to take the airship reports very seriously; however, as the sightings continued, several newspapers covered the story with genuine wonder and interest, while others were more skeptical and even hostile.

Some newspapers denounced the entire airship story as nonsense and openly mocked and ridiculed the witnesses and believers, dismissing them as drunks, fools or liars.

[7] Senarens' acquaintance Jules Verne borrowed the conceit of a secretive inventor who had developed a powerful airship for his novel Robur the Conqueror, which was published in the US in 1887.

Widespread publications about both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight in the late 19th century gave rise to a common belief that the development of a successful airship was imminent.

[11] In July 1868, The Zoologist carried a report from a local newspaper in Copiapó, Chile, regarding a "gigantic bird" with "brilliant scales" that made a metallic sound had been seen flying over the town.

[16] On July 29, 1880, two witnesses in Louisville, Kentucky saw a flying object described as "a man surrounded by machinery which he seemed to be working with his hands" with wings protruding from his back.

[23][28] With public interest in the airship sightings running high, a young San Francisco attorney named George D. Collins came forward and told the newspapers that some months earlier he had been supposedly contacted by a man seeking legal advice concerning "the world's first practical airship", a craft that he claimed was near completion at a secret location near Oroville, about sixty miles from Sacramento.

After Collins' announcement, rumours and wild tales began to spread and for several weeks the "phantom airship" was the biggest news story in northern California.

As sightings and reports of mystery lights continued to increase throughout the state, Attorney Collins found himself the center of so much attention and ridicule, that he came to regret his earlier bragging.

[30] In an editorial published in the San Francisco Examiner on December 5, 1896, William Randolph Hearst lashed out at the "fake journalism" that he believed had led to the airship story: "Fake journalism" has a good deal to answer for, but we do not recall a more discernible exploit in that line than the persistent attempt to make the public believe that the air in this vicinity is populated with airships.

[20] In 1909, a series of mystery airship sightings reported around New England, were likely triggered by a hoax by Wallace Tillinghast, who falsely claimed to have invented and flown a "heavier-than-air" craft from Worcester to New York City.

Although 1909, for example, brought a flood of sightings worldwide and attendant discussion and speculation, contemporary accounts do not allude to the hugely publicized events of little more than a decade earlier.

"[52] During the 1896-97 wave, there were many attempts to explain the mystery airship sightings, including suggestions of misidentified celestial objects, hoaxes, pranks, publicity stunts and hallucinations.

One man suggested the nocturnal lights were actually swarms of lightning beetles; others believed observers were merely seeing meteors or bright stars and planets including Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse) and Jupiter.

Thomas Edison was so widely speculated to be the mind behind the alleged airships that in 1897 he "was forced to issue a strongly worded statement" denying his responsibility.

[61] Two French Army officers and engineers, Arthur Krebs and Charles Renard, had successfully flown in an electric-powered airship called La France as early as 1884.

[65] Research led him to conclude they were built in Iowa by a group of people originally from California:Three individuals investigated in this chapter may be the connecting threads between the various airship mysteries we have examined(1840s to 1897).

"[69] In 1909, a letter printed in the Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) suggested that the mystery airship sightings then being reported in that country were due to Martian "atomic-powered spaceships.