UFOs in the daily Press:

"I THOUGHT I SAW A MARTIAN
repairing his saucer, and I fired"

AND THIS IS WHY A GOOD MAN ALMOST
KILLED HIS NEIGHBOR, WHO WAS FIXING HIS CAR

Lille, 17th. -- Mr. MAURICE RUANT, A FARMER IN SINCENY, NEAR CHAUMY (AISNE), NARROWLY AVOIDED FALLING VICTIM TO THE FEAR THAT THE APPEARANCE OF SAUCERS OR OTHER FLYING OBJECTS CAUSES IN SOME. AT NIGHTFALL, HE WAS FIXING HIS CAR IN A MEADOW NEAR HIS HOME WHEN TWO SHOTS FROM A HUNTING RIFLE WERE FIRED IN HIS DIRECTION. THE PELLETS CRASHED INTO THE CAR BODY NOT FAR FROM HIS HEAD. MR. RUANT FILED A COMPLAINT, AND THE INVESTIGATION WAS IMMEDIATELY OPENED, IDENTIFYING THE SHOOTER AS MR. FAISAN, MR. RUANT'S NEIGHBOR.

He told the police:

"When I saw a silhouette moving in the light of two headlights, I thought I was in the presence of a Martian repairing his flying saucer. I went to get my rifle and fired."

Despite his good faith, Mr. Faisan will be prosecuted.

What did these observatories see?

As a counterpoint to this tragicomic misunderstanding, some rather intriguing testimonies have been collected, given that they come from meteorological or scientific stations where personnel are trained in observation.

The Mont Ventoux observatory reported yesterday that since the morning, at 7:20 AM, in the east-northeast direction towards Orange, an unidentified craft had been hovering in the sky.

This craft had the shape of an ovoid with two superimposed cones connected by some kind of antenna.

No further details have confirmed this information.

In Le Puy, a bright object was observed between 5:50 p.m. and 6:35 p.m. by the Puy-Chadrac meteorological station. The object appeared as an upright olive with a sort of black antenna on top. The station chief initially thought he was looking at the planet Jupiter, but the sudden disappearance of the object proved that he was mistaken.

The same phenomenon was observed by the Ruèyres meteorological center (Cantal). These testimonies can be linked to that of thousands of residents in Tulle who, around 3:30 p.m., saw a large, bright, motionless dot in the sky in the south-southeast direction. It appeared transparent and took the shape of a cylinder with conical ends.

A flying saucer-bicycle collision almost occurred

It seems that during this weekend, mysterious craft were particularly frequent in southern France.

Above Cannes, several people observed a luminous yellow craft with a green tail. But the most interesting testimony came from a municipal tax office employee in Antibes, Mr. Casella, a resident of Bio [sic, Biot], who, while returning home in the evening, came "face to face" with a huge mechanical craft measuring 7 to 8 meters in diameter, resting in the middle of the road. The witness, who was on a bicycle, approached the craft almost to the point of touching it, but then it rose vertically and, with a slight whistling sound, disappeared into the sky.

In the sky of Provence, in Venergues [sic, Vernègues], several grape pickers saw an elongated craft "like a cigar," according to one, and "white and blue," according to another. A third grape picker stated that the object seemed to emit luminous rays.