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about 1953 1955 somewhere in that area

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that early to mid 1950s but an objective

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phenomenon unrelated to cultural

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expectations can be traced well into the

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19th century now here's one example I

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found I spent a lot of time doing

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archival research in in anomalistic sand

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i found this incredibly interesting item

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in the december six 1887 issue of an

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upstate New York newspaper and it was

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from a letter written by a correspondent

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in a nearby village I'm going to read

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you exactly what he wrote because i

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think my paraphrase might dilute its its

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impact but it's quite striking now

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remember this is 1887 nobody's heard of

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UFOs perhaps I might interest some of

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your readers if I should tell him of a

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strange phenomenon I saw at sunset

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October 24th I was sitting in a window

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looking towards the East watching the

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clouds as they rolled up from the west

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giving us a clear sunset at the South

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the forest sparkled and glistened is if

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clad in what looked to me like sparkling

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silver I began to look around for the

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cause and coming from the north was what

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I can only describe it like this about

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mid distance between the heavens and

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earth and coming at a rapid rate we're

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what looked like silver balls reminding

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me of silver coin of all denominations

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bright and sparkling tumbling and

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rushing through the air going towards

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the east and finally disappearing beyond

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the lower Stratus of clouds to winds

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were prevailing at the time the upper

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stratas of clouds going towards the east

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the lower towards the west and this

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bushel of sparkling balls below the

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lower clouds toward the east also this

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grand phenomenon was visible for about

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four minutes and was seen by several

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persons here in town can any one tell me

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from my description what it was and the

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cause of it now here we have what i call

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the core UFO phenomenon structured

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metallic and appearance capable of rapid

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even extraordinary move

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so at kenneth arnold saw on jun 24th

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1947 over the Cascade Mountains and what

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an uncountable number of witnesses have

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reported since objects like these can

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have been tracked on radar and other

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instruments left puzzling ground traces

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stop motor vehicles interfered with

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electrical systems and provided other

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kinds of evidence of their physical and

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technological presence reports such as

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these the number of them well

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investigated oppressively documented

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lend themselves almost inescapably to

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the extra-terrestrial hypothesis and

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indeed if as XO biologically inclined

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astronomers argue our galaxy alone

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contains hundreds of millions of

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advanced civilizations a visible et

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presence is more likely than its

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opposite but if the ETH is a reasonable

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fit for hardcore UFO events the effort

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to devise a unified field theory of

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ufology is faltered and it's folded

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because as the UFO controversy has

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dragged on for more than six decades now

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UFO phenomena have grown ever more

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bizarre I wrote a book about UFOs in

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ufology in the 1960's and 1970's the

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title of it was high strangeness I

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called it that because during that

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period people began to report a range of

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literally incredible encounters with

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UFOs with bizarre UFO associated

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entities and creatures men in black

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abductions otherworldly journeys while

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unprovable though they failed to provide

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a consistent portrait of an otherworldly

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order what connected the stories

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strongly was the witnesses evidence

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sincerity and their sincere conviction

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that they had undergone vivid profoundly

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weird experiences with all the resonance

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of real encounters in the mid-1960s the

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focus of some leading ufologists turned

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to the high strangeness cases as

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indicators of what they saw as the true

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underlying paranormal foundation of all

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ufo-related

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occurrences it was undeniably true that

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the most exotic manifestations made the

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eth pale in comparison made it look like

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the product of a failed imagination and

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paranormal athira theorists insisted

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that UFOs were just a mask covering the

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face of an unknowable shape-shifting

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supernatural intelligence one critic

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quipped that such as supernatural

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intelligence is usually called God the

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more highly strange the report the

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harder it is to prove that some such

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event has happened in any ordinarily

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understood sense of event and happened

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encounters with bizarre entities in

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otherworldly journeys tended to focus on

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one individual or a very small group of

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individuals and such experiences exist

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only in memory and testimony so what are

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we to make of all this I think we can

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get some clues if we go back to the late

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19th century and some curious stories

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that were in circulation then beginning

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in November 1896 people in California

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began report seeing strange airships

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flying overhead in over the next month's

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the reports drifted eastward into the

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Midwest and Texas and even out to the

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east coast many hundreds of reports fill

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the papers if you go back to April 1897

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look through old newspapers you're going

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to find reports mystery airships now no

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such airships were flying in America at

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the time according to aviation history

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and these reports are preserved in UFO

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books not aviation histories the reports

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were treated mostly with derision and

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the coverage and other social dynamics

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sort of prefigured the reception of UFO

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reports decades later but to those to

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those who thought the sightings were not

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just hoaxes and misidentifications the

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belief was that somebody had really

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invented an airship and there was hardly

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a small town in the land that didn't

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boast some small-town tinker who said he

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was about to master the mystery and the

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question of controlled aerial navigation

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and in fact just a few years later at

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Kitty Hawk North Carolina to small-town

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tinker's did just that

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but the provincial papers of 1897 are

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not the most reliable source of

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information many tall tales were printed

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and one variety of story almost

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universally rejected as suspect was the

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1897 equivalent to the close encounter

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of the third kind where people claimed

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that they had actually seen the airships

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land they had met the crews the crews

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were American inventors who gave them a

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name and said what they were doing and

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what they were up to and when they were

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going to declare their invention to the

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world and it was generally long assumed

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that these stories were just pure

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fiction but has it happened you know you

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know after all you know such things

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could have happened as aviation

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historians a test how could anybody have

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experienced them well it turns out that

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apparently people did experience them as

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I found out in some research that I've

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done over the last year or two I was

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particularly interested in an incident

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that was reported in the Houston paper

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on April 21st 1897 describing something

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that is said to have happened late on

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the evening of April nineteenth just

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outside Beaumont Texas junior laguna and

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his son Charlie were returning home late

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at night and they were putting the

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horses they were on hitching the horses

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when they noticed lights and a nearby

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pasture and they walked the several

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hundred years seven hundred yards to

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where the lights were and they

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discovered it was an immense airship

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landed in their pasture and they saw

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four men moving around it they they

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described the airship is about a hundred

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eighty feet long 20 feet wide with four

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large wings and the aeronauts indicated

191
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that they needed water and so Lagoon

192
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according to the lagoans account in the

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Houston post they came into the house

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each of them carrying two buckets the

195
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only crew member to provide information

196
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and then only when asked introduced

197
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himself as Wilson he said that he and

198
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his companions had been flying the

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machine around they were going back to

200
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the Midwest

201
00:08:58,420 --> 00:08:53,570
where they had built this and several

202
00:09:01,180 --> 00:08:58,430
other comparable airships now the

203
00:09:04,350 --> 00:09:01,190
knittin on four days after the Houston

204
00:09:07,780 --> 00:09:04,360
post published the story the New Orleans

205
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times-picayune published an interview

206
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with a man identified as rabbi a levy

207
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levy was a Beaumont resident who is

208
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visiting New Orleans at the time and

209
00:09:23,139 --> 00:09:20,690
leave he told the reporter that on a

210
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recent night he had heard that an

211
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airship had landed on a farm just

212
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outside Bowman and he was enormously

213
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interested in curious and he went to the

214
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site and in the darkness he glimpsed

215
00:09:40,150 --> 00:09:37,190
this huge airship landed in the field

216
00:09:42,579 --> 00:09:40,160
and he said I'm quoting what he told the

217
00:09:45,550 --> 00:09:42,589
pic the paper he said I spoke to one of

218
00:09:47,769 --> 00:09:45,560
the men one of the airship crew when he

219
00:09:50,530 --> 00:09:47,779
went into the farmer's house and shook

220
00:09:52,569 --> 00:09:50,540
hands with him yes he did say where it

221
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was built but I can't remember the name

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00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:54,709
of the place or the name of the inventor

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he said that they had been traveling a