From: Pete.Porro@f414.n154.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Pete Porro)
Subject: GREAT AIRSHIP HOAX
Date: 31 Dec 93 17:12:32 GMT


For those who have asked about the Airship Wave of 1896-97, and the
mysterious sighting, including a classic cattle abduction by the craft.
I think you will find the "rest of the story" interesting. This is the
part that gets forgotten or ignored.


"UFO's and the Limits of Science" Ronald D. Story 1981, Pages 39-40

        Forty-six years later, the tale was finally revealed as a hoax.
        The expose' appeared in a small Kansas weekly, the Buffalo
        Enterprise, in it's January 28, 1943, issue. The obscure article
        was discovered later by UFO writer-researcher Jerome Clark, who
        told the full story in the February,1977, issue of Fate
        magazine. The first breakthrough came when the Buffalo
        Enterprise reprinted Hamilton's tale, which brought a letter
        from Ed F. Hudson, who in 1897 was an editor for the Yates
        Center Farmer's Advocate. Hudson wrote:
        "I had just bought and installed a little gasoline engine, the
        first I believe to come to Yates Center, using it to run my
        machinery replacing the hand-power on the old Country Campbell
        press and kicking the job presses. I invited many of my friends
        into the back shop to see the engine work. Hamilton was one of
        them. He Exclaimed, 'Now they can fly', hence the airship story
        was made up. After we had published it, the story was copied in
        many of the largest newspapers in the country, England, France
        and Germany, some illustraing it with pen-drawn (images by)
        their staff artists. There were also hundreds of inquiries from
        every part of the globe. Soon afterwards there came the various
        experiments in flight, but I have always maintained that Alex
        Hamilton was the real inventor of human flight."

Page 41
        (Ethel L. Shaw, who claims to have been present when Mr. Hamilton
        came home and told them the airship story.)
        "It seems there were a few men round about who had formed a club
        which the called 'Ananias" (Liar's Club). They would get
        together once in a while to see which one could tell the biggest
        story they'd concocted since their last meeting. Well, to my
        knowledge, the club soon broke up after the 'airship and cow'
        story. I guess that one had topped them all and the Hamilton
        family went down in history."
        And so they did, at least among the classics of UFO hoaxdom.


--  
Pete Porro - via ParaNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Pete.Porro@f414.n154.z1.FIDONET.ORG





From: marin@ccr.jussieu.fr (Emmanuel MARIN 43.29.61.54 p45)
Subject: Re : Great Airship Hoax
Date: 4 Jan 94 22:16:21 GMT
Organization: CCR - Universites Paris VI/VII - Paris - France


There's one thing I don't understand about the text Pete Porro posted :
In 1896, flight with a steerable ballon (propelled by an engine)
already existed for more than 10 years. I have even seen
a drawing of a steerable balloon similar to those allegedly seen
in the 1896 Wave, in a scientific French book written in ... 1888.
("L'Atmosphere", by Camille Flammarion).
So can someone explain me why it seems this text supposes there have
been no human flight bfore ?

Is your text itself an hoax ? :) ?

Or is it yet another proff that for the US citizens, there is no life 
outside America ? :) ?


Emmanuel Marin
marin@ccr.jussieu.fr