Between the end of 1896 and early 1897 there was the first major wave of UFO sightings . Scholars Jerome Clark , Lucius Farish , Donald Hanlon , Jacques Vallée , Michael Jacobs through their research and gathering of evidence have noted that it was probably a single airplane to which they were able to learn shapes and sizes.
The phenomenon began in California in November of'96 and ended completely in May the following year, gradually enlarging over the U.S. soil and counting hundreds of thousands of sightings and witnesses . The most common description of the object was to a kind of blimp with eliche , ali , vele and turbines , bright colored lights of different intensity at night (most of the sightings occurred between the hours of 20 and 24) able to achieve 300 Km / h and generally quiet .
It was called airship ( aircraft ). The occupants of the vehicle were described in very different ways: by Western fashion to Eastern By apparent unusual humanoid until creatures orripilanti (according to the testimony of Alexander Hamilton). Some even maintained that he had talks with some of them (as reported by the testimony of Captain Hooton, who described the individual with whom he spoke very nice). The hypothesis that it was an aircraft from outside the Earth did not have great luck at the time if not at any journalist who dared to assume the presence of Life on Mars (because of newly discovered works of a Schiapparelli " canals of Mars "Or formations resembling regular channels and then left to assume the presence of some" farmer Space "). It was very unlike most accredited hypothesis of a mysterious inventor who performed tests on an experimental prototype.
So there were two arguments, one that saw the object as a blimp and the other as a UFO itself. For the first there was the fact that it was the possibility of the construction of an apparatus similar: in 1814 in France Charles Renard and AC Krebs build a type of rigid airship that could reach 20 km / h, in 1898 the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont and the German Zeppelin design a prototype that will be used during the First World War, but the designer who could approach the more "mysterious inventor" is undoubtedly EJ Pennington because he had stated that his flying machine could achieve astonishing speed 300 Km / h and also resembling very all'airship . But we remember the advice of Thomas Edison in connection with this hypothesis: "It is not even imaginable that a person can build an aircraft to build and to ensure that no one notices." This leads to support the UFO hypothesis, although the similarity models human machine not just the disparages.
What is certain is that between 1896 and the following year, the sky of the United States of America was crossed by one or more flying machines It is noteworthy that among the witnesses, there were also people absolutely worthy of faith .