In our age, you will not surprise anyone with "flying saucers" - they write about them in newspapers, talk about them on TV, and some lucky ones even claim to have seen them themselves. True, in practice it often turns out that they did not see UFOs at all, but meteorological probes, rockets fancifully illuminated from the Earth or by the sun's rays, planes or a train from them. Skeptics point out that massive UFO sightings began with the Second World War, when battles began to flare up in the sky, as massive as the battle on Earth. They say, as soon as people have mastered the air space, uneducated freaks who believe in UFOs immediately appeared. It is difficult to argue with this statement. However, what about UFO sightings in the pre-aviation era?
Archives of the Privy Councilor
The leading researcher of the Department of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum (OPI SHM), Candidate of Historical Sciences Alexander AFANASIEV, has been specializing in the history of our Fatherland in the late 18th - early 19th centuries for over 30 years. He is the author of many works that made him one of the greatest experts in this period.
- Recently I was sorting through the collection of papers of a prominent Muscovite who died in the middle of the 19th century, senator, privy councilor Pyotr Poludensky. The archive is small - memories of the years of study at Moscow University, which he graduated with a gold medal, official documents and this curious manuscript, which obviously attracted his attention. I am not a great connoisseur of modern UFO literature, but it seems to me that the document describes a UFO.
Doesn't look like a fake
Indeed, the behavior of a mysterious object is very similar to the current stories about UFOs: the ability to stop abruptly and move quickly, instantly changing direction, bright light, correct geometric dimensions. Could this document be a later fake?
- Excluded, - Afanasyev says. - The recording was made on a folded sheet of letter paper with watermarks, indicating that it was made in 1805 at the factory of Afanasy Goncharov in Kaluga. By the way, Natalia Goncharova, the granddaughter of this manufacturer, became Pushkin's wife. The spelling, punctuation and style of presentation fully comply with the spelling rules of the early 19th century. It can be assumed that the author is an educated person. This follows from the clarity of the wording, the use of chemical and physical terms, and the exact, down to minutes, time of the object's appearance. Perhaps it was one of the teachers or students of Moscow University, because at that time he was near the Kremlin, on Mokhovaya Street.
- But that's why this recording was made, and the drawing itself is a mystery to me, - continues the historian Afanasyev. - At first I assumed it was a draft article for a newspaper. But neither in "Moskovskiye vedomosti", which was published by the university, or in other metropolitan newspapers in 1808, this information was never published.
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Master of Science in Physics and Mathematics, Adjunct in Chemistry …
Afanasyev became seriously interested in this manuscript and decided to consult with astronomers what the unknown author observed in the sky. But scientists unexpectedly helped establish the name of the observer.
“In 1805, the Moscow Society of Nature Experts was established in the white stone, which still exists today,” says a researcher in the history sector of the Astronomical Observatory of the State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg Galina PONOMAREVA. “And by a happy coincidence, handwritten minutes of meetings of that time have been preserved in his archives. And in the collection for 1808 we found an entry in French: "On September 23, Mr. Chebotarev made a report on his observation of a meteor on September 1". Of course, it was not a meteor at all, but at that time all objects flying in the sky were called meteors - the term "UFO" did not exist at all. And the author, as we later found out, turned out to be ignorant of astronomy.
In the lists of employees of Moscow University for 1808, the researchers found an employee by the name of Chebotarev. It was 24-year-old Andrey Kharitonovich Chebotarev, master of physics and mathematics, adjunct (senior lecturer - Ed.) Of chemistry and technology.
It is known that at that time at the university he gave lectures for young industrialists and manufacturers on the topics: "Foundations of the whitewashing, dyeing and printing arts" and "Chemical foundations of polytechnological sciences."
“Therefore, it is quite natural,” concludes Galina Ponomareva, “that the adjunct Chebotarev used“arshin”as a unit of length in describing the strange object, and the color of the“burning club”reminded him of the glow of burning phosphorus in oxygen.
Why the report was not published
“There are manuscripts in the archives of the State Historical Museum, the author of which was definitely Andrei Chebotarev,” continues Alexander Afanasyev. “And his handwriting was different from the document about the strange object in the sky. This is the only thing that prevents from declaring with absolute certainty that Chebotarev was the witness of the UFO over the Kremlin. However, handwriting experts at the State Historical Museum believe that this mysterious document was written by a professional copyist. And Chebotarev could turn to the services of such a person. This was normal practice when the manuscript was submitted for printing. Chebotarev could prepare material for publication in the annual bulletin of the "Moscow Society of Naturalists". But for unknown reasons, it was never published.
1. On September 13, 1808, at 20 hours 7 minutes, someone in a building on Mokhovaya Street heard a strong crack and, looking out the window, saw a rectangular object with an apparent size of 6.35 x 0.35 meters, arcing into the sky.
2. At an altitude of 2 - 3 km, it froze over the Kremlin. And on the side, a bright fireball with a diameter of 1 - 1.5 meters flared up. The glow lasted 5 seconds.
3. When the flame extinguished, the object began to smoothly rise vertically upward and was visible for another two minutes.
The drawing is also notable for the fact that you can see the Kremlin at the beginning of the 19th century.
According to Alexander Afanasyev, the Neglinnaya River flows in front of the Kremlin wall - now it is hidden under the ground, and in this place is the Alexander Garden.
Buildings behind the wall (from left to right: Assumption Cathedral, Archangel Cathedral, Ivan the Great Bell Tower (tallest structure) and Chudov Monastery (demolished in the 1930s).
However, Galina Ponomareva has a different version. The figure shows a view of the Kremlin from the side of the Moskva River. And the drawing was made not by Chebotarev himself, but by the same unknown scribe.
Alexei Yushko, a research fellow at the State Historical Institute, shows the Tula diary of the tradesman Kazachikhin.
An extraordinary phenomenon … never before seen
The phenomenon was visible at Moscow University.
In 1808, on September 1st (September 13th according to the new style. - Ed.) At 8 o'clock and 7 minutes in the afternoon, there appeared in the sky clear and strewn with stars, never before, neither in its beauty and correctness nor in especially bright light, nor in its terrible size an unprecedented phenomenon. As we noticed from its strong crackling in the sky, it rose in a stagnant arcuate line on the horizon from 55 [degrees] to almost 90 [degrees]. Which space, having run almost instantly, stopped in the height of summer clouds on a clear day, as if over the Kremlin and appeared in the form of a long straight plate of the color of phosphoric radiance, nine arshins by eye (6.35 meters. - Ed.) And a width of half- arshin (35 cm). Then, at its front end in its direction, that is, on the South-West, an oval-shaped club suddenly burst into flames with a length of two arshins (1.4 meters) and a width of one and a half (1.05 meters) with the brightest fire, which can only be compared with a radiance in oxygen gas of ignited phosphorus. Having flown without opening flames and sparks, but in a circular manner for five seconds, it illuminated all objects as in the brightest day; then the flame went out, the bright light disappeared, but the bright-light plate remained and very smoothly went perpendicularly up to the stars and even in them it was visible as if an arshin length of three (2.13 meters) for about two minutes, then without disappearing beyond the extreme the height became invisible. Having flown without opening flames and sparks, but in a circular manner for five seconds, it illuminated all objects as in the brightest day; then the flame went out, the bright light disappeared, but the bright-light plate remained and very smoothly went perpendicularly up to the stars and even in them it was visible as if an arshin length of three (2.13 meters) for about two minutes, then without disappearing beyond the extreme the height became invisible. Having flown without opening flames and sparks, but in a circular manner for five seconds, it illuminated all objects as in the brightest day; then the flame went out, the bright light disappeared, but the bright-light plate remained and very smoothly went perpendicularly up to the stars and even in them it was visible as if an arshin length of three (2.13 meters) for about two minutes, then without disappearing beyond the extreme the height became invisible.
THERE WAS STILL CASE
White kite against blue sky
The staff of the State Historical Museum found another strange piece of evidence.
Tula petty bourgeois, a member of the city council Andrei Afanasyevich Kazachikhin on February 24, 1875 wrote in his diary that he saw in the sky a strange ball, which, having risen "very high", with a crash transformed into something white, like a snake with a large round head and a long wriggling tail. A member of the city council observed this for "10 minutes or more."
- The bourgeois Kazachikhin kept a diary "Monument of past events" for almost 32 years. And according to the rest of the recordings, he does not give the impression of a person capable of fantasizing who knows what, - the staff of the OPI State Historical Museum say. - He wrote about everything - about the passage through Tula of members of the imperial family, tours of celebrities, elections to the Duma, quarters of military units, deaths of friends. And he wrote about the mysterious phenomenon in a very ordinary way, without attaching too much importance.