This article was published in the daily newspaper The New York Times, New York, Thursday, April 15, 1897.
Warning: the airship stories must not be taken at face value as "UFO sightings." Evaluation of such stories is under way here.
Editorial — That airship which all the Western papers and some of the Eastern ones are now giving the benefit of several doubts, is visible nightly to correspondents in all parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Iowa. The aerial voyager is evidently a Mahatma of high development, for he exists in a dozen places at once and has a different appearance and does different things in each one of them. It is lamentable to observe, however, that everywhere he violates the United States navigation laws in relation to lights. Usually the captain of this new craft shows only one light. It is most often white, and occasionally red. If this were the worst of his offenses, it might be endured, but the ignorance he displays in the matter of side lights is simply criminal and will get him into serious trouble the moment a United States officer succeeds in bringing him to.
While sailing over the town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Sunday night [April 11, 1897], the sky traveler shocked and angered all the nautical men there by showing a green light on both bows. At Waukegan, Illinois, at the same hour, both the sidelights were red, which is equally illegal and outrageous. If the airship owner persists in this lawlessness, he will not only get the reputation of being a pirate, but his vessel will run into itself, sooner or later, and suffer injuries so serious that his next exhibition will have to be made in several pieces instead of several places.
