"It looked as though the wondrous airship of the seventeenth [of November, 1896,
in Sacramento] was about to be drowned in a flood of ridicule and debunking, but then on
Sunday November 22 [,1896], it came back."
"The evening was a dark and overcast one, just as the evening of the 17th had been.
The light came out of the northwest at about five thirty, and headed directly for the
center of Sacramento. It could not have been a balloon for it was moving against the
wind, albeit slowly. People viewing the thing with the naked eye saw primarily a light,
"fully twice the candle power of an ordinary arc light," shining from a great height."
"Isaac Gough claimed he was the first person in the city to see it. He was walking
near Second and K streets when he looked up and saw the light. He ran down the street
shouting and urging people to come out and look at it. Come they did by the score.
Word of the marvel raced through the town, spread in part by motormen who had come
to think they had a special relationship to the airship."
"One Jacob Zemansky, who was described in the press as "the well-known downtown
cigar man," had a small telescope through which he could view the marvel. "If it was
not an electric arc light of intense power, then I never saw one," Zemansky said.
"Looking at it with the naked eye it seemed to move in a straight line, but looking
at it through the glass it rose and fell like a boat on a gently swelling tide."
"Edward Carragher, a restaurant owner, viewed it through field glasses and thought
that he saw a dark body above the light."
"Walter Mallory, Sacramento's deputy sheriff, described what he had seen: "It was a
strong white light, seemingly moving, I thought as if it was attached to a balloon. But
on a closer observation, I thought I recognized a dark body immediately over the light,
somewhat of a different shape than a balloon. The more I observed it, the more puzzled
I became as to what it was."
"District Attorney Frank D. Ryan saw it and began talking of signs and wonders
in the heavens, and the "advent of the millenium." But then he came down to a less
alarming level. "That thing is too deep for me. I don't understand it. It might be
that aerial travel has been accomplished. It seems as strange and improbable as
were the inventions of the telephone, phonograph and the electric power
applied to streetcars."
"The passage of the "light" over the city of Sacramento proceeded from northwest to
southwest. When it reached the southern edge of the city it turned due west and then
south again, after which it disappeared. Its passage had been slow and majestic, taking
about half an hour in all. During that time it was viewed by thousands. Some were
unimpressed, assuming that the light was just a natural phenomenon. No one heard
voices this time, and no one reported seeing the crew pedaling madly to keep the
craft aloft, as ex-trolleyman Lowery had reported on the 17th. But the slowly moving
light was quite enough to convince many of the residents of Sacramento that the
problem of air travel had been solved." [4]
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