The 1954 French flap:

SHATTERED WINDOWS, HOUSES SHAKEN

A tremendous explosion startles the city of Dieppe

The blast, accompanied by a flash of light, was felt over 100 km away.

METEORITE, SAY ASTRONOMERS

(From our special correspondent MAURICE JOSCO.)

DIEPPE, January 8 (by telephone).

Between 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. yesterday morning, several hundred residents of Dieppe saw a blinding flash of light in the sky and heard a tremendous explosion that shook their homes. Today, everyone is talking about the event.

What exactly happened? No one yet knows for sure. And that is why the people of Dieppe are uneasy.

Early this morning, before dawn, dockworkers gathered on the harbor quays to unload and sort fish. That's where we met them; they described the phenomenon they had witnessed:

- "It was pitch dark, just like now," said head docker René Morin. "Suddenly, a huge ball of fire lit up the sky. The light, first white, then orange, illuminated the entire city. The phenomenon lasted about 2 seconds, then the night returned."

"Four or five minutes later came the explosion. A horrible noise! Everything shook. It sounded like a rolling thunder so violent that my comrades and I thought the Rouen fuel depot had exploded. Then we thought maybe a jet plane had blown up in flight. But, on second thought, those ideas seemed stupid. The light and the sound came from the sea, and an exploding plane couldn't light up an entire city…"

The blast was extraordinarily powerful. All the houses in the port district were shaken. The windows of several homes shattered. Only the suddenness of the event prevented panic.

- "I felt like the city was being bombed," said Jeanne Loriane, who was performing in a bar near the port. "Everything trembled around me. For long minutes I was paralyzed, fearing new tremors."

A blinding light

The residents of Dieppe were certainly not victims of a mass hallucination: the extraordinary phenomenon was observed in a radius of more than 100 kilometers. And all the eyewitness accounts agree. Railroad workers on duty at Serqueux station, 40 kilometers from Dieppe, also heard the terrible explosion around 4:20 a.m.

- "Five or six minutes before the blast," they claim, "a blinding light spread above our heads. It was so bright that we could read the numbers on the stationary railcars from a distance."

This blinding flash, followed by the explosion, was also seen in Malleraye, 80 kilometers from Dieppe, in Forges-les-Eaux, in Seine-Inférieure, in Orchies, more than 100 kilometers from the port, in Formerie (Oise), and even in the region of Arras.

The phenomenon was also observed at sea. The "Neptune," a scallop trawler, was about 16 miles off the coast of Dieppe around 4:30 a.m. when the sky suddenly lit up.

A huge fireball

- "It was a huge fireball that cast a blinding light," the sailors of the "Neptune" told us last night. "It was moving rapidly toward the land, in the direction of Dieppe, leaving behind a wide trail of sparks. None of us saw any object fall into the sea…"

Countless theories are now circulating in Dieppe. None seem to withstand serious scrutiny.

- "It was a mine that exploded at sea," some claim. "It was a jet plane that crashed, or an atomic bomb that exploded," say others…

The sailors, for their part, are convinced that the phenomenon was caused by the explosion of a meteorite.

"It was likely a meteorite"
say the astrophysicists and scientists of the Observatory

Scientists at the Paris Astrophysical Institute believe, pending further information, that it was most likely a meteorite - that is, one of those planetary fragments that travel through outer space.

The tremendous speed of these fireballs causes them to become incandescent upon entering Earth's atmosphere. They sometimes explode with a loud bang. They don't always reach Earth's surface. If our planet's gravitational pull isn't strong enough to alter their trajectory, they continue their wild course through interplanetary space.

The time at which the phenomenon occurred, say experts at the Paris Observatory, supports the meteor hypothesis [nonsense, meteors don't have a preferred schedule!]. They also note that the most reliable testimonies were collected in Dieppe, in Serqueux, in Neufchâtel-en-Braye, and in Forges-les-Eaux - four localities aligned almost perfectly along a 60-kilometer straight line.

The fact that the witnesses do not all agree on the direction the fireball followed is due to the general illumination of the sky, which made it difficult to distinguish the exact trajectory of the light source.