The accumulation of information about UFOs was greatly facilitated by the spread of printing. A significant number of descriptions of flights of unknown spherical, disc-shaped and cigar-shaped objects made by famous astronomers were brought to us by newspapers and magazines of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.
In 1777 Messier observed the flight of a significant number of large dark disks. In 1802 Fritsch, in 1819 Gruythausen, in 1834 Pastorf and in 1860 Russell observed unknown objects crossing the solar disk. In 1892, the Dutch astronomer Müller observed a black disk moving against the background of the moon's disk.
One of the most interesting and unusual phenomena was observed in November 1882 at the Greenwich Observatory by astrophysicists Maunder and Canron, who saw a greenish luminous disk moving across the sky from northeast to west. As it approached, its shape changed, and it gradually turned into an elongated ellipse. The entire observation lasted about 2 minutes. After processing the data of various observations, scientists came to the conclusion that this object was moving at an altitude of about 200 km at a speed of 16 km / s, and its length was about 110 km and a width of 16 km.
Sometimes these unknown objects performed complex maneuvers, hovered, split into pieces and re-connected.
In 1783, the Italian Cavello saw an oval shining body above the sea, which was moving in leaps. Soon it soared vertically upward and flew eastward, after which it abruptly changed its direction of flight and intensified the glow, illuminating the entire area. Then it changed from round to oblong, split in half and disappeared.
In August 1863, a note was placed in one of the Madrid newspapers, which said: “The day before yesterday evening, a luminous reddish disk with a ball of flame appeared over the southeastern part of Madrid. After standing motionless for a long time, the disk began to move rapidly in horizontal and vertical directions."
In July 1868, the staff of the Astronomical Observatory at Oxford observed a luminous object that stopped during the flight and changed its direction of flight several times.
In August 1871, a giant disc appeared over Marseilles. For 9 minutes it hung motionless, then for 7 minutes it moved in a northerly direction and hovered again, and then flew away to the east with great speed (9, 39).
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In August 1939, 6 round silvery objects, the size of the disk of the moon, were observed in Sweden for 2 minutes, which circled in the sky, following each other and forming a kind of round dance.
In February 1942, the crew of the Dutch ship "Tromp" for 3 hours observed a huge aluminum disk, which very quickly flew up to the ship, made a series of amazing maneuvers and disappeared at a speed of at least 6000 km / h.
In the cases below, the unknown objects first flew in one direction and then returned back, and sometimes this happened several times.
In 1812, in Bukovina, a large star appeared in the sky, accompanied by a beam of rays, and flew in the direction of Russia. Then she came back and appeared regularly for four months while the war with the French was going on in Russia.
In 1909, in Limerick, Ireland, the astronomer Fergusson observed a brightly luminous object that appeared in the northeast and, maneuvering, flew southward, and then returned back. The observation continued for 20 minutes.
In the XIX century. there have also been isolated observations of these objects taking off from the ground, which proves their ability to land. There are reports of such observations in 1808 in Piedmont, in 1853 in Northern France and in 1921 in the state of California.
In the XIX and XX centuries. For the first time, time-limited bursts of a large number of reports of UFO sightings were recorded both in individual countries and around the world.
The first such surge occurred in the period from November 1896 to April 1897 in the United States, when a large number of observations of unknown objects by thousands of residents of individual cities were recorded, about which the newspapers of that time wrote a lot.
Flights and hovering of unknown objects were then observed over San Francisco, Oakland, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee, Sacramento, Benton and other cities in the United States.
Many of the observed objects were cigar-shaped and in some cases sent bright beams to the ground, similar to those of searchlights. This was the case in 1896 in San Francisco and in 1897 in Chicago, Kansas City, and Sisterville.
In considering all of these reports, it should be borne in mind that the only aircraft in America at the time were free-floating balloons. In 1897 there were no airships, and even with searchlights, on the American continent. The second burst of reports of flights of unknown objects in different parts of the world took place in 1909, when 43 such objects were noted over England alone. There were reports from both the United States and New Zealand, with some objects also emitting bright rays.
For example, in May 1909, residents of the city of Essex (England) observed for several minutes the flight of a long dark torpedo-shaped object, which emitted two bright beams towards the ground.
In the same month, the crew of the ship "St. Olaf" observed a huge object with five searchlights, similar to an airship, which hovered over the "St. Olaf", and then went to another ship and illuminated it.
In December, a strange airship appeared twice over the city of Worcester in Massachusetts (USA), illuminating everything around with a powerful searchlight.
The same spectacle was seen the following night by thousands of Boston and Vilimontica residents. UFO sightings are known in 1909 and in Russia. In July, a round luminous object was observed in Saratov, flying over the Volga upstream.
In October, a cigar-shaped object that flew over Odessa made a sharp turn and disappeared towards the estuary.
At the end of August 1909, the Daily Mail reported about an unknown object that made two circles over Tallinn and withdrew in the direction of Finland, leaving the city's population extremely agitated.
In late 1912 - early 1913, in a number of European countries, including Russia, flights of some unknown objects with bright light sources like searchlights were observed. Such observations took place over Dover, Liverpool, Thames in England, over Przemysl, Yaroslav and Lviv in Austria-Hungary, as well as over Romania and western Russia.
In Russia, such objects with two searchlights were observed over Kamenets-Podolsk, Bialystok and Slobodka station, and in the Gaivoron, Gaisin, Zhmerinka area they illuminated the area.
In the newspapers of that time, they were called the term "airplanes", which was fashionable for that time, although aviation was then in its infancy and airplanes still did not have navigation devices, let alone electric generators and searchlights. Therefore, they could then fly only during the day and in good weather, plotting a course along visually observed terrestrial landmarks. Flights of unknown objects took place, as a rule, at night, and even at the most unfavorable time of the year - in winter, which completely excludes the assumption that these could be airplanes.
By the way, the German government then officially announced that the mysterious vehicles that appeared over England were not German airships, even if only because they were unable to fly to England and return back in one night. The Russian military authorities stated then that Russian aviators did not make such flights either in the south-west of Russia or in Galicia.
In the XIX and early XX century. also recorded a number of observations of large groups of some unknown objects, which sometimes flew in formation.
In September 1820 strange bell-like objects flew over the French city of Embruny in an even formation, making a loud noise. Having made a 90-degree turn, without breaking the formation, they flew away. The famous astronomer Arigo wrote about this case in the Annals of Chemistry and Physics: “Numerous observers saw strange objects moving in a straight line during a lunar eclipse. They were at equal distances from each other and kept the formation, making turns with military precision."
In September 1851, more than a hundred luminous disks appeared over Hyde Park in London during the World's Fair, which flew up from the east and north, after which they gathered together and flew away.
In August 1871, the astronomer Trouvlay reported a massive appearance over Madona at high altitude of flying objects of triangular, round and quadrangular shapes and moving at different speeds. One of the objects lost its maneuverability and began to fall, making the movements of the falling leaf.
In August 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla photographed several groups of round and cigar-shaped objects flying in formation at equal distances from each other and slowly crossing the solar disk from west to east. Each group had 15-20 objects, and Bonilla counted 283 objects in total. The next day, he observed 116 more such objects. In the French magazine Astronomy, their distance from the Earth was estimated at about 300 thousand km.
On September 21, 1910, about a million New Yorkers watched for three hours hundreds of circular luminous objects flying over the city, as the entire world press wrote about then.
Of particular interest is the phenomenon observed on February 9, 1913 over North America and the western part of the Atlantic Ocean. According to the professor at the University of Toronto Hunt and the Englishman Dening, who summarized hundreds of eyewitness accounts, this phenomenon looked like this.
At 21.05, residents of the central part of Canada observed the appearance of a fiery red body with a long tail in the northwestern part of the sky, followed by approximately 10 "waves", each of which had 20 - 40 objects flying in groups of 2,3,4 objects. … Thus, in total, over 300 luminous objects flew by, the disappearance of which was accompanied by a rumbling sound. The total duration of observation of the entire phenomenon for individual groups of observers was more than 3 minutes. Based on the aggregate observations from 143 points on the American continent and on ships then in the Atlantic Ocean, it was found that these objects flew in a straight trajectory from Saskatchewan through the area of New York and Bermuda to Cape Sao Rock on the east coast.
In astronomical literature, this phenomenon was called "Hunt's fireballs" or "Cyrillid procession", although all its characteristics contradicted the characteristics of the fireballs flight. Suffice it to say that the length of the trajectory of these objects in the atmosphere was over 9000 km, while the greatest recorded flight length of fireballs in near-earth space is only 2400 km. The flight altitude of these objects, according to Hunt, was about 40 km, and according to Hofmeister and Davidson, about 70 - 80 km, and their trajectory was parallel to the earth's surface, while the flight altitude of fireballs was much higher, and their trajectories, as a rule, directed at an angle to the Earth's surface ("falling fireballs").
All eyewitnesses of the described phenomenon also noted that the groups of these objects were moving majestically and unhurriedly, their flight speed was 8-10 km / s, while the speed of the fireballs was several tens of kilometers / s, and the observation duration was only a few seconds. It is also surprising that not a single observation of the fall of these "fireballs" was recorded.
Hunt suggested that these could be groups of small cosmic bodies that flew past the Earth and were captured by it, as a result of which they acquired a circular orbit parallel to the earth's surface. But other scientists, such as Davidson, Hofmeister and Fischer, argued that air resistance would not allow ordinary cosmic bodies to make such a long flight in the atmosphere, because they had to burn up or fall to the ground. A clear explanation of this phenomenon has not been received.
The most amazing thing is that 5 hours after this observation, that is, 2.30 at night, several groups of similar objects flew along exactly the same trajectory, although the Earth managed to turn 75 degrees during this time. It is also rather strange that the next day (February 10 at 2 pm), Toronto residents observed the passage of 7 - 8 dark objects, first from west to east, and then from east to west.
Flights of groups of unknown objects during the period under review were also observed in 1849 in Switzerland, in 1877 in France, in 1796 in Canada, in 1808 in Sweden (18), in 1845 in England, in 1880 -m in Germany and in 1895 in Mexico.
Cases when flights of unknown objects led to the destruction of settlements and were accompanied by the death of people deserve separate consideration.
It is assumed that the real cause of the "Great Fire" in Chicago on October 8, 1871 was the passage of a huge fireball, which destroyed several settlements on its way. The heat emitted by this ball was so strong that even the marble burned under its influence, and the metal slipway on the river was fused into a monolith. Interestingly, after the balloon flew in the vicinity of Chicago, hundreds of corpses of people were found who died not from fire, but for some unknown reason.
On the same night, such balloons swept over the States of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Illinois, with 1,500 people killed in the city of Green Bay, and 6,000 people in Pestigo and Chicago each.
In another case, which took place in 1886 in Maracaibo (Venezuela), under the influence of an unknown oval object hanging close to the house, tumors appeared on the bodies of 9 residents inside the house, which disappeared the next day, leaving black spots. For 9 days, these people did not feel anything, and on the 10th day, the affected areas began to fester, forming open wounds, and people began to lose hair.
At the same time, all the trees near the house dried up, and black spots appeared on them too. All the injured people were sent to the hospital and survived.
Below are two cases of explosions of unknown objects in the period of modern history.
One of them took place in June 1790 in France, and the testimony of many witnesses was recorded by the police inspector. It happened as follows.
Near the town of Alençon, a group of peasants saw a large spinning ball, the size of a carriage, flying at great speed and surrounded by flames. This ball landed on the top of the hill. The heat emitted by it ignited the grass and bushes, but the peasants extinguished them. He lay there until evening, still warm, and a whole crowd of curious people gathered around. Suddenly, a semblance of a door opened in the wall of the mysterious object, and a humanoid creature, dressed in tight-fitting clothes, emerged from it. Seeing people, it muttered something incomprehensible and ran into the forest. For several minutes, the object exploded silently, leaving nothing behind but fine dust.
The search for the mysterious alien was unsuccessful.
The second explosion was much more powerful and became, perhaps, the most mysterious phenomenon of the early 20th century. We are talking about the flight and explosion of the Tunguska space body on June 30, 1908, the nature of which has not yet been established. Some features of this phenomenon have caused conflicting interpretations, others have not been answered at all.
First of all, the true direction of the flight of this body remained unclear, for, according to the analysis of the felling of the forest and the testimony of dozens of independent eyewitnesses who were south of the explosion site, it turned out that it flew from east to west. However, along with this, there are testimonies of dozens of other eyewitnesses, who were located east of the explosion site, who claim that the body flew from south to north. In order to somehow link up these conflicting testimonies, some scientists, and in particular F. Yu. Siegel, put forward a hypothesis that the body changed its direction of flight, that is, it was controlled.
It has not yet been possible to find an explanation for the very strong glow of the stratosphere at an altitude of about 85 km, which lasted for three days after the fall of the body and was especially strong on the first night. Moreover, this glow was observed only in the strip stretched from west to east and included the territories of England, Central Europe, South Russia and Central Asia. Obviously, this glow could not have been caused by the trail of the explosion cloud, which would not have been able to rise to such a height and spread over thousands of kilometers in a few hours, right up to England.
Perhaps this glow was caused by the flight of the body itself, which initially flew from west to east, and then turned north?
The nature of the trajectory and the flight speed of the Tunguska space body is also puzzling. According to eyewitnesses, it turns out that it flew about 800 km along a gentle trajectory with an inclination angle of only 7-10 degrees, and its final speed was only 1-2 km / s, while for meteorites and comets it is about 30-60 km /from.
In the newspaper "Siberia" (1908, July 2 (15)), published in Irkutsk, the flight of this body was described as follows: "June 17 (30), 1908, at the beginning of 9 o'clock in the village of N. Karelin (north of Kirensk) the peasants saw in the north-west quite high above the horizon some extremely luminous body, moving for 10 minutes. The body was presented in the form of a pipe, that is, it was cylindrical … ".
Many eyewitnesses not only saw the flight of this body, but at the same time heard the sounds generated by it - a fact that indicates that the speed of its flight did not exceed the speed of sound.
The local teacher G. Zyryanov from the village of Sosnino, who observed the flight of the body, described it as follows: "A body similar to a log, but much brighter than the sun and with a huge sheaf of sparks behind it floated in the sky below the clouds." Other eyewitnesses said that it looked like a barrel - "narrower at the edges, thicker in the middle."
The nature of the explosion itself remained unexplained, the calculated power of which, according to various sources, was 20-40 Mgt and under the influence of which individual roofs were torn off and fences were knocked down at a distance of up to 400 km, and in the place of the explosion itself a forest was tumbled down on an area of 30-50 km. What energy could cause such a powerful explosion? Scientists who hold the opinion that the Tunguska body was a comet with an ice core believe that the explosion was purely mechanical, due to the instantaneous transformation of this ice core into vapor. Then the questions arise, where did the powerful magnetic disturbance come from, which caused the remagnetization of the soil on an area of 3500 km, which lasted about 4 hours after the explosion, and why did the trees in the explosion zone grow 4-10 times faster?
By the way, academician G. I. Petrov, based on an analysis of the flight speed and trajectory of the body, came to the conclusion that this explosion could have occurred not due to kinetic, but only due to the internal energy of the flying body.
There is also an assumption that this explosion was nuclear, although, according to Academician Petrov, the gamma background in the area of the Gungus explosion turned out to be about 100 times less than it should be at the site of an air nuclear explosion of such power.
Perhaps the explosion was caused by some kind of internal energy, so far unknown to science?
Of interest are also reports that in the area of Podkamennaya Tunguska then there was not one, but three explosions with intervals between them. In particular, the newspaper “Voice of Tomsk” wrote about this (1908, July 15): “In Kansk, Yenisei province, on June 17 (30), at 9 o'clock in the morning, an underground blow followed, everything started to shake. The rumble was heard as from a distant cannon shot. After 5-7 minutes, a second blow followed, stronger than the first, accompanied by the same rumble. And a minute later another blow, but weaker than the first ….
Scientists also did not come to a consensus as to why in the area of the explosion - if we assume that the described body is a meteorite - neither a crater nor remnants of the substance of which the exploded body consisted was found, although its diameter, according to calculations, was several hundreds of meters, and the mass is about one million tons.
Eighty years have passed since the explosion of the Tunguska space body, during which more than 80 different hypotheses about its origin were put forward, however, to this day it still remains unidentified.
An even more surprising UFO event allegedly happened during the First World War.
We are talking about the mysterious disappearance of an entire battalion of the British army during the Dardanelles operation, which was observed by the soldiers and officers of the Australian-New Zealand corps, which operated as part of the British troops.
According to the recollections of the English General Cunningham, it looked like this: “On a cloudless day on August 21, 1915, on the Gallipoli Peninsula, over a height of 60, seven strange completely identical“clouds”, similar to loaves of bread, hung in the position of the British troops. Despite the wind, they were completely motionless, and their shape did not change. On the ground below them there was another exactly the same "cloud" about 250 m long and about 60 m wide and high. It seemed dense, as if made of solid material.
At this time, a battalion of the 14th Norfolk Regiment, numbering 800 people, was sent to reinforce the British troops at Hill 60. In front of many eyewitnesses, the battalion approached the “cloud” on the ground and entered it, but not a single soldier left it. An hour after the last soldier disappeared into this “cloud”, it slowly rose from the ground and joined other “clouds”, after which they all moved northwest towards Bulgaria and disappeared from sight 45 minutes later. And in the place of the "cloud" there was no one. An entire battalion of the British army disappeared and was reported missing.
After the surrender of Turkey in 1918, the British command demanded the return of the disappeared battalion, believing that its soldiers had been taken prisoner, but the Turks proved that there was no fighting in the area that day, and they had nothing to do with the disappearance of this battalion. …
Some data on observations of unknown flying objects during the Second World War are also of interest.
In the archives of the US Air Force, information has been preserved that American pilots during the Second World War repeatedly observed some kind of glowing balls that accompanied their aircraft when flying over Germany and Japan. They were small in size, ranging in diameter from a few inches to 2m. These objects, then called "fu-fighters", appeared singly, in pairs or in groups, circled around planes or flew parallel courses with them, usually not getting closer than 30m.
On March 6, 1942, when British bombers were returning after a raid on Essen, one of them, at an altitude of 4.5 km above the Südersee, was pursued by some unknown luminous object in the shape of a ball of bright orange color. When the object approached the aircraft at 150 m, machine gun fire was opened on it, but this did not give results. After some time, the UFO disappeared at great speed.
In October 1943, during a raid by a group of American bombers on Schweinfurt, a series of small sparkling discs about 10 cm in diameter appeared over the city, which followed the planes without interfering with their bombing. One of the bombers (B-17) with its right wing passed through the "flock" of these disks without any impact on the aircraft engine.
In November 1944, pilots of the 415th squadron of night bombers, based in England, while flying over France, observed about 10 luminous disks moving across the sky in one line at "extraordinary" speed.
In the summer of 1944, in Normandy, four American officers and a journalist observed a fireball pulsing with red light, which, approaching the front line, hovered over it for 15 minutes, after which it quickly flew away.
In December 1944, the crew of an English night fighter flying over German territory in the Hagenau region saw two large orange balloons, which, having risen, began to pursue the plane. To break away from them, the fighter began to make sharp turns, but the objects exactly repeated all his maneuvers. After two minutes they fell behind and disappeared.
The British Air Force headquarters also received reports from British pilots about their encounters with UFOs. In 1943, a special group was created in England, led by General Massey, to determine what kind of discs appear over the British Isles, whether they are German aircraft of a new design.
The Allied General Staffs initially assumed that it was a secret weapon of the Germans, which Goebbels' propaganda praised. And General Eisenhower, in a special order of 1944-23-12, identified "mysterious floating balls" as the secret weapon of the Germans. But this assumption fell away when the Allied agents began to report that the Germans considered these mysterious objects to be new American aircraft.
Foo-fighters were also observed in the Pacific Ocean. In August 1944, over Sumatra, some unknown object was following an American bomber on a combat mission.
In February 1945, anti-aircraft guns of the American battleship New York and the destroyers accompanying it in the western part of the Pacific Ocean fired at an unidentified silvery object the size of a two-story house in flight.
A special report presented to President Roosevelt by the chairman of the Committee of Chiefs of Staff, General Marshall, is of considerable interest as the most reliable document on the observation of unknown flying objects in February 1942 over Los Angeles. In this report, it was reported that on the night of 1942-25-02 15 unknown spherical objects larger than an aircraft approached Los Angeles from the ocean. The objects flew at a speed of 300 km / h. Then they descended and split into groups of 3-6 UFOs each. The objects were illuminated by searchlights, and anti-aircraft artillery opened fire on them, firing 1430 shells within an hour, but did not shoot down a single object.
The assumption of the Americans that these were Japanese planes was not confirmed.
According to German archives, flights of unidentified objects during World War II were also observed over German territory.
In 1942, some unknown objects repeatedly appeared near Peenemünde, where the V-1 and V-2 missiles were tested.
In March 1942, a German Me-109 fighter was raised to intercept an unknown object approaching the Banak airfield in Norway. The fighter pilot reported that the object with visible antennas had a cigar-shaped shape, 100 m long and 15 m in diameter. Before his eyes, this object sharply went vertically upward at high speed and disappeared into the sky.
In December 1943, an unknown cylindrical object flew along the route Helgoland, Wittenberg, Neustrelitz at a speed of 3000 km / h.
In February 1944, a new rocket was tested at the Kummersdorf base, which were filmed. The image on the developed film showed that in flight the rocket was accompanied by some kind of spherical body (not visible from the ground), which made circles around the rocket.
In September 1944, during a test flight of the first German jet aircraft Me-262 at the Rechlin experimental center, the pilot of this aircraft at an altitude of 12,000 m saw a huge flying object with a number of holes and the like of antennas. This object soon disappeared at a speed of more than 2000 km / h.
Another incident occurred in 1944 in Poland. The radar stations of the German air defense unit detected some rapidly approaching unidentified object at an altitude of 15 km. Batteries from 88mm cannons opened fire on him, but to no avail. The object only increased its speed. "2000, 3000, 5000 km / h" - shouted an agitated observer. When the object came down, they opened fire on it and quad 22-mm anti-aircraft guns, and it was clearly visible how the tracer shells hit directly into the object, but did not have any effect on it. At an altitude of 2 km, the object changed direction of flight and disappeared.
To investigate these mysterious flying objects in the Luftwaffe during the war, a special secret group "Sunderburo-13" was created, and all work was carried out under the code name "Operation Uranius".
The materials presented in this chapter about UFO sightings in ancient times, in the Middle Ages and in modern history completely refute the statements in our press of the opponents of UFOs, who claim that reports of UFO flights began to arrive only after the first flight of people in a balloon, and unknown objects then saw balls.
With the emergence of airships, according to opponents of UFOs, they began to look like silver cigars, and in the early 30s they began to take the "appearance" of propeller-driven aircraft and, finally, now - flying spacecraft, to which one can argue that the first flight in the air ball - the Montgolfier brothers - occurred in 1783, the first rigid airship was created only in 1883, while flights of unknown spherical and cigar-shaped objects have been observed since ancient times.
On the other hand, back in 1903, the Wright brothers made their first flight in an airplane, but there were no reports of sightings of UFOs in the form of propeller-driven aircraft. And vice versa, the predominant form of UFOs, judging by the descriptions of those who observed them throughout the history of mankind, is a disk, although none of the countries had and does not have any aircrafts or spacecraft of a disk-shaped shape.
The above material clearly confirms that UFOs have existed throughout the history of mankind and had the same appearance as the objects we observe today. Moreover, judging by the sources, they "behaved" in the same way as modern UFOs: - they performed complex maneuvers, changed their shape, sent beams to the ground, carried out takeoffs and landings, flew in formation, influenced eyewitnesses, exploded. In the past, as now, there have been massive flights of groups of objects and bursts of messages about them. However, then no one seriously dealt with them and, moreover, did not think about the possibility of their extraterrestrial origin.