One hundred years ago, in July 1910, UFOs appeared over the Russian Empire. Archivist Ivan Ivanovich Kiyashko with his wife from Yekaterinodar (since 1920 - Krasnodar) became one of the eyewitnesses of this event. However, these were far from the only witnesses; many saw UFOs that summer.
A note in "Vedomosti"
"Kubanskie oblastnye vedomosti" of July 13 reported:
“On the evening of July 10, the Kiyashko couple were sitting on the terrace of their house and, after a sultry summer day, enjoyed the coolness that breathed. Suddenly they noticed in the west, above the First Male Gymnasium, a red object moving rapidly towards the northeast. Its flight lasted no more than five minutes. I. I. Kiyashko glanced at his watch. It was 23 hours 35 minutes.
“We looked through binoculars,” the spouses said, “but apart from two red oblong lights, nothing could be seen. The flying object looked like an airplane and flew quite high over the city. A rather strong swing of the object was noticeable due, apparently, to a strong wind in the upper atmosphere."
In those days, the world followed the success of the first airplanes - fragile machines made of wood and canvas. Everyone knew that airplanes were not capable of carrying lights on board, but the Kiyashko spouses preferred to call the object a buzzword. UFOs were also called by journalists, adding the epithet "mysterious" or "mysterious".
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More "airplanes"
However, "airplanes" appeared in those years not only over Russia. Two days before the described event, on July 8, a mysterious object flew over the capital of Colorado - Denver (USA). “According to the former judge U. N. Dixon and his family, the July 9 Des Moines Daily News said, the car was flying at an altitude of about 1,000 feet (about 300 meters) at tremendous speed. Denverians with an interest in aeronautics say they don't know of any such flying craft in the vicinity."
And in the London Weekly Dispatch of July 10, an even more remarkable case was told. The crew of the French single-masted fishing vessel Jayun Frederic noticed “a large black object like a bird off the coast of Normandy. Suddenly he fell into the sea, bounced off the water, fell again and disappeared, leaving nothing to pick up. Of course, no airplane could have survived the impact on the water without falling apart on the spot.
On July 17, New Yorkers saw "an object that could not be identified - either an airplane or an airship." The UFO flew very quickly and retired to the northeast.
Inhabitants of America and Europe, intrigued by reports of mysterious objects in the media, looked up to the heavens with interest, sometimes taking wishful thinking. For example, on July 20, New Yorkers noticed "a strange light in the sky an hour or two before midnight" and thought it was "an experienced aviator who decided to fly over the city in an airplane."
It is unlikely that people confused UFOs with real airplanes or airships then.
The light source “moved slowly over the rooftops of tall residential buildings, and it also visited business districts. An hour or two later, the source slowly landed, and onlookers could see that it was a lantern tied to a large kite. The snake, as it turned out, was launched by a student observing the atmosphere from the roof of one of the buildings of Columbia University in New York.
Monsters of two elements
But 1910 was famous not only for mysterious celestial phenomena. The Los Angeles Herald on July 11 posted a short note on the events that took place in Winone, Minnesota, USA:
“It is said that in the Mississippi, downstream of Richmond, a certain water snake or eel was spotted about 24.6 feet (7.5 meters) long. He was seen several times by Henry Winter, S. H. Denno and Perry Brown from Richmond. In shallow water, it sometimes protruded a foot with a little (about 60 cm) out of the water. Witnesses say he is unusually active."
Another unknown creature, this time terrestrial and very miniature in size, was described in detail by New Zealand newspapers … half a century later! What prompted the old-timer to tell about what she saw exactly in 1910 remains unknown:
Mr. H. J. Stone from Woodend, Australia described in detail a reptile that he saw in New Zealand about 50 years ago …
“The creature,” he said, “was killed in a grove of wild tea trees. It ran out of the hole where the Maori fishermen were digging for worms, stood on its hind legs and made something like a bark, and then rushed at the person who disturbed it. Jaws wide open, it made several lunges before he hit the creature on the head with a stick.
After that, the fisherman brought the carcass of the killed monster to his house. The reptile was more than two feet (70 centimeters) long. The tail is very small, apparently it was recently discarded and started growing again. The tail was much lighter in color than the sleek, dark green body. The head of the unknown creature is large, the muzzle is rectangular, with a wide mouth.
Teeth are longer than roofing nails, but much thinner. They were so crooked that they seemed to intersect with each other. The upper lip is thick, heavy, covering the lower one. Pronounced superciliary arches, large, bulging eyes, heavy eyelids. On the top of the head was a bright, as if drawn, regular cross. The front legs of the reptile were large and massive, the hind legs were small. seemed underdeveloped. A ridge ran along the entire ridge. There were holes on both sides of the head just behind the eyes. When the inhabitants of the neighboring houses had enough of admiring the reptile, the fisherman's mother buried it."
Unfortunately, Stone could not later find the remains of a mysterious animal, and zoologists had to be content with describing it. It is still unknown what kind of creature it was.
Winged "harpies"
The Italian ufologist Maurizio Monzali in the magazine II Giornale dei Misteri for April 2010 cites an incident told to him by a peasant from Barbellino del Mugello (Firenze province). According to the peasant, this happened “on a hot summer evening in 1910” during the threshing of grain. He does not remember the exact date: then he was only ten years old. Italians usually thresh grain at the end of July.
In the evening, after supper, the peasants gathered in the yard to chat before going to bed. And suddenly, in the clear sky, a low-flying black creature appeared, "like a giant bat the size of a man, which has wings instead of arms." The head of the monster was "pressed into the shoulders" and surrounded by a glowing shimmering halo. He quickly flew across the sky and disappeared behind the trees. The terrified peasants agreed that it was the devil himself!
A similar event took place in 1944, when a young naval sailor saw from the ship a "flight of strange winged creatures" over Taranto. Looking through a telescope, he was convinced: these are winged creatures similar to people, flying in formation. Their bodies were covered with feathers and reddish fur, and their legs ended in three-toed feet with claws!
In Greek mythology, harpies are mentioned - winged half-women, half-birds. In Hesiod's "Theogony" these are winged deities with long hair, flying faster than the wind, and in Virgil's "Aeneid" (1st century BC) - birds of prey with the faces of girls and sharp hooked claws: “There is no one more terrible than harpies, no plague nor the wrath of the gods can compare with them. The stench comes from their stomachs, they are always pale with hunger. They slide down the mountains, flapping their wings loudly. Harpies devour everything that they can swallow, and what they cannot - they cover with a layer of droppings.
Judging by the stories of witnesses from Italy, not everything in myths is fiction!
M. Gerstein
Secrets of the twentieth century
