UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: Masinaigan@aol.com
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 12:46:05 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 04:26:42 -0400
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 2, Number 27
UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 2, Number 27
July 6, 1997
Editor: Joseph Trainor
PATHFINDER MAKES SAFE
LANDING ON MARS
Cushioned by an array of airbags, the USA's
Pathfinder spacecraft made a safe landing on the
planet Mars Friday afternoon, July 4, 1997.
The craft began its 390-million-mile voyage
on December 4, 1996, when it rocketed away from
Cape Canaveral, Florida. It touched down at about
1:05 p.m. Eastern USA time in an ancient floodplain
called Ares Vallis.
It was the third soft landing of an American
spacecraft on Mars. The first, Viking 1, landed 21
years earlier, on July 4, 1976, while its partner
spacecraft, Viking 2, touched down on September
20, 1976.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California began receiving black-and-white camera
images of the Martian surface almost immediately
afterward. Full-color photos of Ares Vallis were
unveiled at the JPL press briefing at 6 p.m. Pacific
time Friday night.
The next phase of the mission is to deploy the
23-pound robot exploration vehicle, Sojourner, for
a tour of the landing site.
(Editor's Comment: For an outwash floodplain, Ares
Vallis is littered with an awful lot of rocks and boulders.
In the first color photo, I saw at least one outcrop of
bedrock, which means there was some geological
uplift after the gargantuan flood that created the valley.
The boulders also show surprisingly little windblown
erosion, which is strange because Mars is buffeted all
the time by colossal dust storms. I'm starting to wonder
if Immanuel Velikovsky was right about Mars undergoing
some tremendous cataclysm in the not-so-distant past.)
THOUSANDS CONVERGE ON
ROSWELL FOR CELEBRATION
Thousands of UFO enthusiasts converged on Roswell,
New Mexico this week for UFO Encounter '97.
Attendees included well-known ufologists such as
Michael Lindemann and Stanton G. Friedman, "ancient
astronaut" theorist Erich von Daniken, and Paul Davids,
producer of the Showtime movie "Roswell."
Participants began arriving before Tuesday, July 1,
1997, and by the week's end, the events were jammed
with onlookers. Tour operators ferrying visitors to the
alleged crash site on Hub Corn's farm north of town
were running over 50 bus trips per day.
On Wednesday, July 2, 1997, one busload of
site visitors saw two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets
fly low over the mesa where a silvery UFO shaped
like the heel of a man's shoe was said to have crashed
fifty years earlier. (See USA Today for July 3-6, 1997;
the New York Daily News for July 5, 1997; and the New
York Post for July 4, 1997.)
UFO SIGHTED IN ROCHESTER,
NEW YORK
On Saturday, June 29, 1997, at 3:30 a.m., a man
stepped out onto his backyard deck in the northern
section of Rochester, New York (population 241,741).
"I was looking up at the stars from my deck, which
I often do in the summer before I got to bed," he reported.
"In the northwest portion of the sky, yet relatively overhead,
I saw a light slightly dimmer than the other stars move.
It then became slightly brighter than the surrounding stars,
and made a movement similar to the bottom half of an S,
like a small, round half-a-turn. I was pretty amazed and
watched it as it grew dim, until I couldn't see it any more.
As I was straining to pick it out, suddenly in the western
sky, much lower on the horizon, appeared what I would
typically say is a shooting star, flashing across the sky."
"Now that my curiosity was peaked, I stayed out and
kept watching the northern sky, which would be over Lake
Ontario." He then spied "a very faint light which I could
barely pick out...traveling at quite a pace north, faster than
any conventional aircraft or satellite would travel. It had the
capability of reaching the northern horizon in, say, about a
minute or less. It seemed to waggle and not travel straight."
The resident is age 38 and a technician who said he
"was pretty amazed at what I saw." (Many thanks to
Kenneth Young of T.A.S.K. for this report.)
LUMINOUS CLOUDS APPEAR
OVER MESA VERDE RUINS
On Monday, June 23, 1997, the same evening that
residents of Las Vegas reported a giant V-shaped UFO
north of their city, a weird phenomenon occurred at
Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, 45 miles
(72 kilometers) west of Durango.
The phenomenon occurred at approximately 9:30
p.m. and was seen by three local residents--a woman
descending Mancos Hill and a married couple in the
western end of Montezuma County, near Cortez
(population 7,095).
The witnesses saw "clouds filled with light,
appearing for about 13 seconds." One person said
it resembled "a little cloud with the moon shining out
from underneath, except that there were no clouds
and the moon was not over in that part of the sky."
The phenomenon appeared to be centered over
the cliffside adobe ruins built by the Anasazi Indian
civilization of 750 A.D.
Other statements described it as "like a cone-
shaped light shining out...a spotlight...the color was
yellow, almost like a 'bug light.'" (See Cortez, Colo.
newspaper for June 26, 1997, page 1. Many thanks
to Barbara Milicevic, Colorado state director of
Skywatch International, and Tim Edwards for this
news story.)
MORE UFOs FLY OVER
VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA
A luminous UFO appeared over Victorville,
California (population 14,220) at 11:45 p.m. on
Friday, June 20, 1997.
The following night, Saturday, June 21, at
around 10 p.m., a second UFO was seen over
the city, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers)
northeast of Los Angeles.
Both sightings were reported on the local TV
station on Monday, June 23, 1997.
Previously, Victorville was visited by a glowing
reddish-orange sphere the night of March 13, 1997,
the same night as the big UFO flap in Arizona.
(Many thanks to Victor M. Sandoval for this news
story.)
NEW UFO SIGHTING IN THE
PERSIAN GULF
A mysterious bright light was spotted flying
high in the air off the coast of Bahrain, an Arab nation
in the Persian Gulf the night of Friday, June 13, 1997.
According to reports by the Gulf News Agency (GNA),
the anomalous light "was the size of a Boeing 747 and
made no sound," and was "17 or 18 nautical miles"
offshore.
This was the second UFO seen in the Persian Gulf
in recent months. In May, an Arab colonel and several
friends spotted one at his farm at Hatta in Dubai.
Local ufologist M.A. Al-Adwani interviewed one
eyewitness in Bahrain, who said he "was frozen in terror
when he saw that his room was flooded with bright light
for a few seconds, and disappeared. He told his oldest
brother who called me for clarification." (Many thanks to
M.A. Al-Adwani for this report.)
(Editor's Comment: Sounds as if this UFO was trying
to run the Allied air blockade and get into southern Iraq.)
STRANGE LIGHTS SEEN OVER
AUSTRALIA'S CAPITAL
The second half of June saw no let-up in the UFO
traffic over Australia. The island continent reported
another heavy flap between June 25 and June 30, 1997.
On Wednesday, June 18, 1997, at 5:10 p.m.,
residents of Canberra, Australia's capital, reported
seeing "three or four bright yellow lights in the western
sky. Two of the illuminations were pencil-shaped."
The following evening, Thursday, June 19, 1997,
at 9:15 p.m., people in the Terry Hills suburb of Sydney
"reported sighting a dark, oval-shaped object with
square windows and read lines coming out of it, heading
in a northwesterly direction."
A "line or tube-shaped illumination" was seen in
several large Australian cities on Friday, June 20, 1997.
The object first appeared over Canberra in the Australian
Capital Territory (ACT) at 5:10 p.m. Five minutes later,
it was seen over Melbourne, and then an hour later, at
6:15 p.m., over Adelaide. Finally, at 9 p.m., residents
of Sydney caught a glimpse of the UFO.
Following a relatively quite week, the UFOs resumed
their overflights in Victoria (Vic.) on Thursday evening,
June 26, 1997.
At 5:10 p.m., a resident of Bendigo, Vic. sighted "a
long, tube-shaped brown object." Another witness
reported, "It had some sparkle things at each end of it."
The following evening, Friday, June 27, 1997, at about
5:15 p.m., another Bendigo resident reported seeing "a
darkish line or oblong object heading west."
That same Friday evening, at around 5:30 p.m., people
living in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales (N.S.W.)
saw "a jet-black twister (wind storm) (or tornado--J.T.) shaped
object with a white, teardrop-shaped object underneath
corkscrewing to the west. Bearings were taken--10 degrees
north of due west (when) first sighted at 45 degrees up
(from the horizon--J.T.), and it took four minutes to travel to
the horizon."
Twenty-four hours later, between 5:19 and 5:23 p.m.
on Saturday, June 28, 1997. Blue Mountains residents
called Australia's National 24-Hour UFO Hotline to report
"that they had videoed two vertical pink-red illuminated
lines travelling downwards in the western sky for four
minutes. They said that as these vertical lines descended
and got closer to the horizon, the lines changed to a
V-formation. It appeared that there was also something
else with these lined formations.
Images are available at this URL: http://www.
geocities.com/Area51/Vault/1177/picpg.htm
(Many thanks to Ross Dowe of Australia's National
24-Hour UFO Hotline for allowing UFO ROUNDUP to
quote from his report.)
LUMINOUS UFOs SEEN ALL
OVER SAO PAULO STATE
On Sunday, June 29, 1997, between 6 p.m. and
6:30 p.m., luminous UFOs were seen over two large
cities in Brazil's state of Sao Paulo. The UFOs
appeared simultaneously over Nova Odessa, S.P.
and Americana, S.P., plus a handful of smaller
communities.
In Nova Odessa, a rancher named Antonio Silva
Barbosa grabbed his videocamera and shot footage
of "two circular illuminations, which moved about
rapidly and emitted a blinding light as they flew over."
Silva Barbosa described the UFOs as "balls of fire."
In Americana, Jose Roberto Moreira spotted three
glowing UFOs. "They were visible for three minutes
in the middle of the sky," he reported, "The smallest
was just as brilliant as the others. All three were
moving in the same westerly direction."
UFO reports also flooded in that evening from
smaller cities of the region, including Cosmopolis,
Holambra, Itapira and Paulinia. Residents of these
communities claimed to have seen the "fireballs"
off and on during the past three weeks. (See the
Brazilian newspaper Diario do Povo for July 2, 1997,
"Luzes Estranhas Sao Filmadas Nos Ceus da
Regiao." Muito obrigado a Pedro Cunha para esas
noticias.)
CRESCENT-SHAPED UFO
SIGHTED NORTH OF DALLAS
Weird crescent-shaped UFOs and black
helicopters have been playing a strange game of
cat-and-mouse in the suburbs north of Dallas,
Texas during the past month.
On May 21, 1997, residents of a suburb known
as The Colony spotted "a black, double-rotor
helicopter (Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook--J.T.)
flying low, making lots of noise and circling the pasture
behind our house."
On June 7, 1997, at around 9 p.m., Amy H. went
out to her car and saw "a huge, yellow-orange cescent
moon." After a brief drive around the block, she returned
home and began sorting firewood. Then she "noticed it
had started to eclipse and was rapidly shrinking...I went
back to sorting my wood and then realized the moon
just does NOT eclipse that fast. I looked up again and
the 'moon' was back in full crescent. So I stood there and
watched it. It started 'eclipsing' again, and that's when I
knew something was wrong."
Amy ran indoors to fetch her videocamera, but when
she returned, the "crescent moon" was gone.
Days later, Amy spoke on the telephone with a
family who had seen a similar UFO in northern Texas.
No sooner had she finished speaking to the other
witnesses than "a large, charcoal-colored military plane,
a smaller plane right behind and a helicopter behind the
smaller plane flew over my house at 4:15 p.m."
The planes circled the house "while the helicopter
flew to the northwest and circled the exact spot where
I'd seen the crescent-shaped object on the (June) 6th...
I filmed the helicopter as it flew in low, tight circles...It
did this for about 20 minutes, flew off to the northwest,
returned 10 minutes later and circled again for 20
minutes, then flew directly overhead and went south
(towards Dallas)."
On Friday, June 27, 1997, around 10:45 p.m., Amy
and her daughter were in the backyard swimming pool,
looking to the north and talking "when we saw a huge
bright flash directly north of where we were looking. It
lit up the entire area and half the sky. We were amazed
by what we had just witnessed and thought it might have
been a plane crashing, a meteor, an explosion or
something really big blew up."
"Within three to four minutes of this bright flash/
explosion, we saw a helicopter fly in from the northwest,"
Amy added. "It began circling the area where we saw
the flash/explosion and was shining two bright beams
of light on the ground as if searching the area. I grabbed
my videocamera and filmed it. It circled real low and
shined the beams of light all over the area, would land
over there for awhile, and then circle some more for
about 20 minutes. Finally, it flew off to the northwest
but returned about 10 to 15 minutes later and started
circling and then landing with the beams of light on."
Reviewing the video, Amy noticed something odd.
"At one point, I saw a little blinking light flying around
out in the field, and it flew around, looped towards the
helicopter light and disappeared. In playing the videotape
back in slow motion, we found that the little blinking
light goes directly up to the helicopter and seems to
'merge' with it. It really looks strange, so I am hoping to
send the footage off for analysis." (Email Interview)
from the UFO Files...
1947: EX-FIGHTER PILOT SPOTS
UFO OVER NEW HAMPSHIRE
(Here's another actual UP news story from the big
UFO Flap of 1947. Enjoy!)
Portsmouth, N.H. (UP) -- Thomas M. Dale, son of Gov.
Charles M. Dale of New Hampshire and president of
Yankee Airways today (July 8, 1947) was among the
saucer-spotters.
The former World War II flier said he saw a
"mysterious flying object--a long, thin metal thing going
about 700 miles an hour--" as he was making an air trip
from Laconia to Wolfeboro early last night (July 7, 1947).
Dale said he saw the object when he looked down
over Alton Bay. It was flying east towards Wolfeboro,
he said, apparently motorless and pilotless. He said it
looked like a gray solid metal material flying at 1,000
feet. His plane was flying at 2,800 feet when he spotted
the projectile, he said.
Corroborating his statement was A.B. Skinner of the
Lakes Region Flying Service at Wolfeboro, who said he
saw the object pass overhead in an easterly direction at
about the same time Dale reported seeing the object."
(See the Keene, N.H. Sentinel for July 9, 1947, page 1.)
(Today is Double Feature Day, readers, in honor of the
50th Anniversary of the Roswell incident, so read on...)
1947: SAUCERS APPEAR OVER
MALLARDVILLE, B.C.
The mystery of the "flying saucers" became more and
more mystifying to local residents over the weekend as
six persons, three of them residents of Mallardville, laid
claim to having seen the flashing discs streaking through
the sky at noon-time on Sunday (July 6, 1947).
Antoine Beauregard, painter, said he was working on
a house during the afternoon and suddenly saw "a shiny
aluminum disc" cross the sky "at a height of about 15
miles."
"It was about 300 feet long," said Mr. Beauregard.
"My eyesight is very, very good, and I can judge distance
and height accurately."
A Columbian reporter who tried to catch up with Mr.
Beauregard but he was not at his work. He was seen
along Columbia street early this morning but the reporter
was unable to find him to get his story of the cavorting
crockery.
Mrs. Beauregard said she knew little of what her
husband saw.
"My husband said that he saw a shiny, round disc,
bigger than most and sort of squared off on one side.
(Interesting! See descriptions of the crashed Roswell
saucer--J.T.) That's all I really know about it."
Others laying claim to having seen the "saucers"
were Mrs. V.M. Bailey, Mrs. Edward Vere and Mrs.
Carol Watkins, who were sitting on the steps of the Old
Orchard Auto Camp about 4 p.m. Sunday when they
saw "a cloud of dust like two small tornadoes on the
hill toward New Westminster."
According to their report, three discs then pulled
up from behind the trees." (See the newspaper The
Columbian for July 8, 1947. Many thanks to Bill Oliver
and the gang at UFO*BC for making this old news
clipping available at their website.)
FUN UFO WEBSITES:
More "Flap of '47" newspaper accounts are
available at UFO*BC's website. Check them out at
http://www.ufobc.org
Don't miss our parent site, UFOINFO, with its
new and updated features, at this URL...http://www.
digiserve.com/ufoinfo/
Back issues of UFO ROUNDUP can be
downloaded from our site at http://www.digiserve.com/
ufoinfo/roundup/
If you see a UFO story in your local newspaper,
clip it out and mail it to us at UFO ROUNDUP,
Box 16, Warwick, Rhode Island, USA 02886.
If you have a UFO to report, email us with all the
details at Masinaigan@aol.com.
That's it for this week. Some week, eh? The first
Mars landing in 21 years and the big celebration in
Roswell. For our readers in Venezuela, here's hoping
you had a great time on your "Dia de Independencia"
yesterday. Join us next week for more saucer news
from "the paper that goes home--UFO ROUNDUP."
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1997 by Masinaigan
Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post
news items from UFO ROUNDUP on their websites or
in newsgroups provided that they credit the newsletter
and its editor by name and list the date of issue in
which the item first appeared.
UFO UpDates - Toronto -
updates@globalserve.net
Operated by Errol Bruce-Knapp - ++ 416-696-0304
A Hand-Operated E-Mail Subscription Service for the Study of UFO Related
Phenomena.
To subscribe please send your first and last name to
updates@globalserve.net
Message submissions should be sent to the same address.
|
Link it to the appropriate Ufologist or UFO Topic page. |
Archived as a public service by Area 51 Research Center which is not
responsible for content.
Financial support for this web server is provided by the
Research Center Catalog.
Software by Glenn Campbell.
Technical contact:
webmaster@ufomind.com