Tag: Outer Space

December 17, 1900: Getting in Touch with Our Outer Selves

Posted on by Richard Daybell

December 17 was an historically busy day in the world of ufology and marsmessagethings extra-terrestrial. While we think of the 1950s as the real age of interplanetary happenings, folks had long been preoccupied by the possibility (or perhaps the certainty) of life beyond planet Earth.

Wasn’t it likely that other heavenly bodies were populated? And wasn’t it a given, observing Earthbound mankind, that beings out there were far more intelligent than us?

Back in the nineteenth century, there was much speculation about the inhabitants of other planets.  Certainly, intelligent beings might live on the Moon, Mars, and Venus; but since travel there was difficult at best we settled for the possibility of somehow communicating with the ETs, itself a poser since there was no radio and the postal service was pitifully land-bound. We were sort of stuck back in the technology of smoke signals.

Carl Friedrich Gauss suggested drawing a giant triangle and three squares, the Pythagoras, on the Siberian tundra, ten miles wide.  Joseph Johann Littrow proposed using the Sahara as a blackboard, filling giant trenches with water, then pouring kerosene on top of the water and lighting it to create different messages.  Using this method, a different signal could be sent every night. The inventor Charles Cros, convinced that pinpoints of light observed on Mars and Venus were large cities, spent years trying to get funding for a giant mirror with which to signal Martians and Venusians.  Astronomer Franz von Gruithuisen saw a giant city surrounded by family farms on the moon. He also saw evidence of life on Venus, and went so far as to suggest that the clouds shrouding the planet were caused by a great fire festival put on by the inhabitants to celebrate their new emperor.

On December 17, 1900, amid beaucoup de publicité,  the French Academie des Sciences announced the Prix Guzman, a 100,000 franc prize to be given to anyone who might find the means “of communicating with a star and of receiving a response.” Communication with Mars was specifically exempted because it would not be a difficult enough challenge.   Although no communications followed, nearly a century of alien sightings, encounters, and abductions did.  But then, on December 17, 1969, the United States Air Force pulled the plug, closing its Project Blue Book and concluding that no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships existed behind the thousands of UFO sightings. And yet, on the evening of that very day, in full view of millions, an alien sighting occurred right on the television sets in living rooms everywhere, as Tiny Tim married “Miss Vicki” on The Tonight Show.

JUNE 21, 1947: PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE

Posted on by Richard Daybell

In 1947, shortly after noon, Harold A. Dahl, who had spent the day scavenging for drifting logs in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, saw something. It wasn’t a drifting log.  Actually it was four or five somethings. They were shaped like doughnuts (he had already eaten, so it wasn’t his stomach’s imagination, and none of the objects were glazed or chocolate-covered).  They were overhead.  And they were flying in formation.

Dahl described these curiosities in detail. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there were portholes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be having engine trouble (if indeed it had an engine). A second doughnut came alongside, then retreated. At this point, things began being tossed out through the inner portholes of the troubled doughnut. Stuff began raining on and hitting the little boat, damaging its windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, wounding Dahl’s son and killing his dog Shep.

The next morning, even though Dahl had not publicly described the incident, a mysterious man in black visited Dahl. He was driving a new black 1947 Buick and had the air of a government official. “I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said cryptically (and rather dramatically). He also made not-so-subtle threats that Dahl’s family might be in danger. As a result, Dahl later claimed the UFO sighting was a hoax, but even later suggested he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family. His son, however, claimed not to have been on the boat.  And Dahl’s dog wasn’t really named Shep.

None of this is fooling conspiracy theorists who have suggested one great big cover-up which they follow directly to the executive boardroom of none other than Dunkin’ Donuts.

 

December 17, 1900: Getting in Touch with Our Outer Selves

Posted on by Richard Daybell

December 17 was an historically busy day in the world of ufology and marsmessagethings extra-terrestrial. While we think of the 1950s as the real age of interplanetary happenings, folks had long been preoccupied by the possibility (or perhaps the certainty) of life beyond planet Earth.

Wasn’t it likely that other heavenly bodies were populated? And wasn’t it a given, observing Earthbound mankind, that beings out there were far more intelligent than us?

Back in the nineteenth century, there was much speculation about the inhabitants of other planets.  Certainly, intelligent beings might live on the Moon, Mars, and Venus; but since travel there was difficult at best we settled for the possibility of somehow communicating with the ETs, itself a poser since there was no radio and the postal service was pitifully land-bound. We were sort of stuck back in the technology of smoke signals.

 

Carl Friedrich Gauss suggested drawing a giant triangle and three squares, the Pythagoras, on the Siberian tundra, ten miles wide.  Joseph Johann Littrow proposed using the Sahara as a blackboard, filling giant trenches with water, then pouring kerosene on top of the water and lighting it to create different messages.  Using this method, a different signal could be sent every night. The inventor Charles Cros, convinced that pinpoints of light observed on Mars and Venus were large cities, spent years trying to get funding for a giant mirror with which to signal Martians and Venusians.  Astronomer Franz von Gruithuisen saw a giant city surrounded by family farms on the moon. He also saw evidence of life on Venus, and went so far as to suggest that the clouds shrouding the planet were caused by a great fire festival put on by the inhabitants to celebrate their new emperor.

On December 17, 1900, amid beaucoup de publicité,  the French Academie des Sciences announced the Prix Guzman, a 100,000 franc prize to be given to anyone who might find the means “of communicating with a star and of receiving a response.” Communication with Mars was specifically exempted because it would not be a difficult enough challenge.   Although no communications followed, nearly a century of alien sightings, encounters, and abductions did.  But then, on December 17, 1969, the United States Air Force pulled the plug, closing its Project Blue Book and concluding that no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships existed behind the thousands of UFO sightings. And yet, on the evening of that very day, in full view of millions, an alien sighting occurred right on the television sets in living rooms everywhere, as Tiny Tim married “Miss Vicki” on The Tonight Show.

 

 

 

JUNE 21, 1947: PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE

Posted on by Richard Daybell

In 1947, shortly after noon, Harold A. Dahl, who had spent the day scavenging for drifting logs in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, saw something. It wasn’t a drifting log.  Actually it was four or five somethings. They were shaped like doughnuts (he had already eaten, so it wasn’t his stomach’s imagination, and none of the objects were glazed or chocolate-covered).  They were overhead.  And they were flying in formation.

Dahl described these curiosities in detail. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there were portholes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be having engine trouble (if indeed it had an engine). A second doughnut came alongside, then retreated. At this point, things began being tossed out through the inner portholes of the troubled doughnut. Stuff began raining on and hitting the little boat, damaging its windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, wounding Dahl’s son and killing his dog Shep.

The next morning, even though Dahl had not publicly described the incident, a mysterious man in black visited Dahl. He was driving a new black 1947 Buick and had the air of a government official. “I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said cryptically (and rather dramatically). He also made not-so-subtle threats that Dahl’s family might be in danger. As a result, Dahl later claimed the UFO sighting was a hoax, but even later suggested he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family. His son, however, claimed not to have been on the boat.  And Dahl’s dog wasn’t really named Shep.

None of this is fooling conspiracy theorists who have suggested one great big cover-up which they follow directly to the executive boardroom of none other than Dunkin’ Donuts.