What was in the sky in 1897?

[Laisrean]

Link (http://www.thepaper24-7.com/main.asp?SectionID=23&SubSectionID=22&ArticleID=16320)


Many people across the country swore to seeing an airship in American skies throughout 1896 and 1897. The Crawfordsville Star was generally skeptical in reporting on unexplained phenomenon, but the testimony of two Montgomery County men they deemed credible changed their minds.

John Callahan, a farmer living around Dry Branch, told the Star: "You will remember that last Monday was a perfect day with the bluest sky without a speck of cloud or moisture. . . . I was washing my buggy . . . about 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I . . . saw Mr. Edward Grimes, a well-known farmer who resides . . . west of Crawfordsville. 'Do you see that?' exclaimed Mr. Grimes as he pointed upwards. 'I do that,' I replied, 'and what a queer thing it is.' 'Do you know what it is?' he exclaimed. 'That I do,' I replied, 'it's the air ship.' . . . And we looked at the queer thing till it faded out of sight away over to the northeast beyond the city."

Callahan described the vessel as flying twice as high as kites normally fly. "It was a dark looking object pointed like a fish," he said, "It had a fan like arrangement at the rear something like a fish's tail. It was much bigger in the middle than anywhere else."

Sounds like a Zeppelin to me. :smile:

[Trithemius]

I wouldn't say it was a "zeppelin," since Count von Zeppelin didn't start building his first airship until 1899. Apparently though, he got the idea from seeing French airships in use during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. So it's entirely possible that one of these French airships was brought to the US at the end of the 19th century, and that's what was seen.

[omar]

There was a report in Astralia in the 1880's of a cigar shaped object that transversed there country. The first airship went up in France about 1888? The dirgibals was not built till about 1900. The French had balloons in the Franco- Prusian War not airships.

[IceLupa]

Experimental technology?

[Xander67]

Since no-one was able to acertain for certain what it was, then obviously by definition it as a UFO.

It could have been experimental tech, as Ice lupa suggested..

there was a controlled flight in 1852 of an Air Ship (27 km)

it was made by Henri Giffard.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Giffard1852.jpg

On 24 September 1852 Giffard made the first powered and controlled flight traveling 27 km from Paris to Trappes. what's to say that there were not inventors and teams working on similar type things here in the US??

the quote that the farmer made, "it's the air ship" would indicate some type of knowledge of existence? Maybe he knew the people who were working on it..

another item that leads me to suggest he knew what it was is that he was a well known farmer, and his testimony was considered credible..
if people trusted his word on something as mysterious at the time as an air ship, then maybe he knew something about it..

experimentation was being done in Europe during the mid 1800's so why couldnt it have been done in america then in 1897??


I was washing my Buggy.. :rotfl: