UFOs Nothing New In Texas

A torpedo-shaped sphere cruised the nighttime sky over Levelland on Nov. 2, 1957, while on the ground mysterious “eggs of light” blocked the roads.

The reexamination of the so-called “Roswell Incident” in the 1990s complete with film footage of an alleged extraterrestrial autopsy renewed interest in Unidentified Flying Objects. Although nothing in the Lone Star past can compete with the controversial claim that a flying saucer crashed in the New Mexico desert 59 years ago, Texas history is full of out-of-this-world sightings.

Farmworkers at Bonham filed one of the earliest reports on record in 1873. The stupefied laborers swore they saw an enormous “serpentine object” float overheard in broad daylight.

This obscure episode preceded by a generation the Great Airship Mystery, the first nationwide commotion concerning UFOs. Starting on the Pacific coast in November 1896 and moving gradually eastward for six sensational months, thousands of Americans insisted they gazed at giant flying machines two decades before the Wright brothers mastered heavier-than-air flight.

An oblong, propeller-powered craft supposedly churned against the wind over Sacramento on Nov. 19, 1896. The next day a similar airship entertained Oakland, where onlookers said they heard voices, laughter, and Christmas carols.

During the wacky weeks that followed, flying cigars and cylinders were spotted over Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, and countless other communities. In April 1897, an entire fleet of UFOs caused a high-altitude traffic jam over metropolitan Chicago.

A former congressman experienced a Kansas encounter of the much-too-close kind. As an airship hovered 30 feet off the ground, six odd-looking creatures were plainly visible inside a transparent undercarriage. The shaken ex-solon said, “I don