The 1954 French flap:

A "Flying Sphere"
fitted with a parachute,
lands
in a field in Uxem

We received Thursday afternoon from one of our readers, Mr. Maurice Gesquière, agricultural worker, domiciled in Les Moëres, a letter in which our correspondent informed us that he had picked up, in a field, a white parachute to which were attached their very light aluminum hemispheres.

This Friday morning, we learned that the gendarmes of Rosendaël, on a tour of Les Moëres, had just seized the mysterious object.

As Mr. Guesquière indicates, these are two aluminum half-spheres, which fit into one another to form a ball. The diameter of the latter is 32 centimeters. It is pierced with small holes through which pass the ropes of a parachute.

The sphere has marking in English ("bottom half", on one of the parts, "top half", on the other; which can be translated as "half at the the top" and "half at the bottom.") Another marking is painted, in black, on the deveice: "Armless not wanted."

The gendarmes could not identify the device. However, one fact intrigues them: the parachute attached to it does not seem to be the original one. The latter mus have been recovered and replaced by a piece of white canvas, roughly tied, actually.

This Friday afternoon, the gendarmes were to return to Les Moëres to interrogate Mr. Gesquières, whom they had been unable to touch in the morning. Mrs. Gesquière then told them that her husband had picked up a sphere and a parachute on Wednesday in a field in Uxem.

As the flying saucers swarm in the sky of France, the flying sphere of Les Moëres also poses its little enigma...

To see the saucers pass...
fifteen metal workers
from the Aisne
stop working
for a quarter of an hour

Everywhere, they are seen, everywhere they surprise, and the incredulous will decrease with regard to their apparitions...

Thus at the rolling metal mills of Beaufor, near La Fère (Aisne), some fifteen workers stopped their work for a quarter of an hour, in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, to watch several flying saucers pass by. The fact, recorded in the report of this important factory, is true, and it is very difficult to admit a collective hallucination of this magnitude...