| Date: | January 22, 1878 |
|---|---|
| Time: | Morning |
| Place: | Denison, Texas |
|
A Strange PhenomenonFrom Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out hunting, attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eyes to discover its character. When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed. When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height. Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as he could judge, a balloon. It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies. Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists. [ddn1] |
|
Major Keyhoe wrote: “Until now, I had supposed that the term “saucer” was original with Kenneth Arnold. Actually, the first to compare a flying object with a saucer was John Martin, a farmer who lived near Denison, Texas. The Denison Daily News of January 25, 1878, gives the following account:” “From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out hunting, attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eyes to discover its character.” “When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed.” “When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height. Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as he could judge, a balloon. It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies. Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists.” [dke1] |
|
|
According to Antonio Ribeira, in the summer of 1873, John Martin is working, when he sees a strange machine approaching him. "When the machine is above him, he notes that it has the form of a flying saucer." [ara1] |
First known case where the word "saucer" appeared in conjuction with a flying object. There is no difference remarkable with some of the modern accounts of daylight discs.
Extraterrestrial craft possible, invention possible. Single witness.
|
Above: the office of the Denison Daily News circa 1873.
Expectedly, this old report misses accurate data, and no interview of the witness is possible to obtain better information or to check the reliability of the account or the honesty of the witness. But this old report exists, and although the precise indications miss, it remains nevertheless than it cannot be easily interpreted in terms of commonplace phenomena: the report lacks the description of a trail, luminosity and the brevity which would make it possible to explain it away as a meteor; it misses the slowness which could make for a balloon, only manmade flying object of that time, it misses the context and the signs of a hoax by the witness or of a journalistic hoax. Thus it remains an unidentified flying object that nothing forbids to relate to more recent observations.
On this matter, the first and possibly the only investigation I started was to verify the existence of the newspaper article. The first transcript of this newspaper's article appears in Major Keyhoe's book, and I could always personnaly verify that everything the Major wrote was factual; but cross-checking can do no harm.
I thus first wrote on December 12, 2005, to a citizen of Denison who offered a number of interesting historical information on Denison and on Bredetted C. Murray who founded the Denison Daily News offices on Skiddy St., now known as Chestnut Street. Unfortunately, I could not reach this informant.
I then wrote on the next day to a lady managing a local library. She quickly answered that she had many issues of the Denison Daily News on microfilm, unfortunately, the collection started just a few years too late. However she told me that she would explore other historical resources and let me know. Indeed on December 31, 2005, I had my answer:
The article does exist, and it appears at the correct date on the front page of the paper, in the fifth column and lower half of the page. A copy of the original is at The Center for American History (www.cah.utexas.edu) at the University of Texas in Austin.
| Type of report: | Witness report according to local newspaper. |
|---|---|
| Number of witnesses: | 1 |
| Number of named witnesses: | 1 |
| Witnesses occupations: | Farmer. |
| Type of location: | Not indicated. |
| Coordinates: | Lat. 33.76 Long. -96.54 |
| Coordinates precision: | Unknown. |
| Description of "UFO": | Dark round object. |
| Description of "manoeuvers": | Flies fast from 45° elevation when first seen to overhead and on. |
| Reactions: | Interest. |
| Occupants: | None. |
| Occupants keywords: | N/A |
| Communication: | N/A |
| Language: | N/A |
| Content: | N/A |
| Daylight/nocturnal: | Daylight. |
| Weather: | Not indicated. |
| Observation devices: | None. |
| Strangeness: | High. |
| Reliability: | Average. |
| Explanation(s) at the time: | None. |
