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A History of Modern Sightings mystery airships, mystery airplanes, Foo fighters, ghost rockets, flying discs, and flying saucers. In fact, strange, unidentified sights in the sky can be traced as far back into history as one is willing to delve. Drawings interpreted as someone's idea of spaceships and spacemen have been found on the walls of European caves dating back tens of thousands of years. Prehistoric lines on a Peruvian plain are said to be a guide for UFO landings. Biblical passages are read as the ap- pearances of what are now called UFOs. All through the nine- teenth century, ships’ captains and astronomers reported seeing things in the sky that failed to fit anything known and were thus lamely referred to as "remarkable meteors." Unfortunately, there is no way to apply scientific techniques to determine the legitimacy of clues older than a few score years. The original references are too vague and the witnesses long since dead, so all that remains are amusing tales and the intriguing hint of a link between ancient unknowns and their modern counterparts. To take old reports at face value would be unscientific in the extreme. The author and philosopher Charles Fort collected several volumes of anecdotes about B EFORE THERE WERE UFOs, there were remarkable meteors,