The 1954 French flap:

For the amateurs of curious tales

THE "BURNING" AFFAIR OF THE "FLYING SAUCERS" CONTINUES

(When do we get the teacups and the spoons)?

If we are to judge by the content of the daily of the gazettes, the sea serpent and other "monster of the Loch Ness" seem dethroned by the "flying saucers".

Again and again benevolent informers announce the appearance of some of those in this or that corner. Of course, there were some found in our area. Thus in the evening of Wednesday, October 22, around 8 p.m., a resident of La Norville saw in the sky a "round and luminous object of a volume double than the full moon, sometimes stopping, sometimes moving, until the moment when it fell on the ground". She reported of her "astral" observation to friends, neighbors, her colleagues of work at the André factory... Some of her interlocutors assured her, besides, that it she had not dreamed, and that themselves had seen, etc...

Alas, one of them, without the consent of his informant, thought to alert a big national Parisian newspaper. The gossip writer in charge hastened to "lay" a toasted echo whose star was Mrs. C... of Arpajon, who told us that she would have rather spared herself such publicity.

We will not go so far as to certify, iron cast, that none of the Martians, those cherished by Wells and other "futuristic" novelists, came to visit our planet comfortably conveyed in "flying saucer". But perhaps the use of beaconing rockets at the C.E.V. of Brétigny could be enough as the explanation to the mystery?

It seems that the same assumption could be sufficient to explain the phenomenon noted Monday afternoon, during a few moments, by four residents of Arpajon, in good faith this time, who saw a brilliant and motionless sphere at a certain altitude. After two minutes of observation, the machine moved suddenly horizontally and disappeared.