The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Eclair, France, le 10 janvier 1979.
Mr. Raymond Poppel, president of the Tourist Office of Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer, has not yet recovered: around 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, he was out in his garden, taking advantage of a lull in the rain, when his attention was caught by a white object, in the shape of a balloon, which was slowly descending towards his house.
Instead of landing on the ground, when it was perhaps 80 cm or a meter away, it suddenly ascended at an amazing speed and soon disappeared in the clouds, at great altitude, in the direction of Marseilles.
