The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, France, page 8, on January 9, 1954.
See the case file.
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DIEPPE. -- Yesterday morning, between 4:30 and 5:15 a.m., nearly 70 dockworkers at the port of Dieppe saw a blinding flash in the sky followed, four minutes later, by a tremendous explosion that blew open many doors and shattered several windows in houses in the town.
Most of the inhabitants of Dieppe were awakened by this deafening noise.
It is likely, according to the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, that the observed phenomenon was nothing other than a fireball. The very time at which this observation was made - shortly before sunrise - supports this view. However, it is added that such explosions are not very rare, and many others have been recorded across the globe.
It is known that fireballs are bodies whose origin and composition are poorly understood and which, moving through the sky at extreme speed, heat up when they encounter the Earth's atmosphere due to the resistance it offers them. It is then that they become incandescent. Sometimes, they pass without any sign other than a luminous trail. Sometimes, they explode silently, sometimes with a crash. It also happens that they fall to the surface of the globe, whole or fragmented: this is the origin of meteorite falls.
