The article below was published in the daily newspaper La Croix, Paris, France, page 1, le 9 janvier 1954.
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Thursday morning, nearly 70 dockers from the port of Dieppe saw a blinding glow in the sky, followed, four minutes later, by a formidable explosion, which opened many doors and smashed the windows of houses in the city.
Most of the inhabitants of Dieppe were woken up by this deafening noise.
The keeper of the Dieppe semaphore got in touch with his colleague from Fécamp and with those of all the small ports on the coast. Everyone agrees that the phenomenon was seen at these different points.
On the other hand, the keeper of the Le Havre semaphore did not notice anything.
However, several witnesses living in La Mailleraye, a locality located approximately 80 kilometers south of Dieppe, and in Serqueux, a village 50 kilometers south-east of Dieppe, are adamant: they saw the light coming from the direction of Dieppe.
It is very likely, according to the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, that the phenomenon observed in the Dieppe region was nothing but a fireball. The very time at which this observation was made - shortly before sunrise - helps to support this view. But, one adds, such explosions are not very rare, and one could record many others on all the surface of the globe.
