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On 6 November, 1967, during a transmission by German Television 2 on the subject Invasion from the Cosmos?’, the captain of a Lufthansa aircraft told of an incident of which he and four members of the crew were eye-witnesses. On 15 February, 1967, about ten to fifteen minutes before landing in San Francisco, they saw close to their own machine a flying object with a diameter of about 33 ft that shone dazzlingly and flew alongside them for some time. They sent their observations to the University of Colorado which for want of a better explanation surmised that the flying object was part of a previously launched rocket falling to the ground. The pilot explained that with over a million miles of flying experience he was as unable as his colleagues to believe that a falling piece of metal could stay in the air for a quarter of an hour, have such dimensions and fly alongside an aircraft; he believed this explanation even less since this unidentified flying object had been observable from the ground for nearly three-quarters of an hour. The German pilot certainly did not give the impression of being a visionary. "Unidentified flying objects (UFO's) have been sighted over various districts of south-east Europe during the last few days At the weekend an amateur astronomer photographed three of these gleaming celestial objects at Agram. But while the experts were still giving their opinions of this photograph that was splashed across several columns of the Yugoslavian papers, more UFO's have already been reported from the mountainous region of Montenegro, where they were even supposed to have caused several forest fires. These accounts come mainly from the village of Ivangrad where the inhabitants swear black and blue that they have observed strange brightly illuminated heavenly bodies every evening during the last few days. The authorities confirm that several forest fires have occurred in this district but so far cannot explain what started them.’ 'Sofia (UPI) ‘A UFO has appeared over the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. According to the report of the Bulgarian News Agency BTA, the UFO could be recognised with the naked eye. BTA says that the flying body was "bigger than the sun's disc and later took the shape of a trapeze". The flying body is supposed to have emitted powerful rays. It was also observed by telescope in Sofia. A scientific collaborator of the Bulgarian Institute for Hydrology and Meteorology said that the flying body apparently moved under its own power. It was flying about 18 miles above the earth.’ People block the road to serious research by boundless stupidity. There are 'contact men' who claim to be in communication with extraterrestrial beings; there are groups who develop fanciful religious ideas from hitherto unexplained phenomena or build cranky philosophies of life from them or even claim to have received orders for the salvation of mankind from UFO crews. Among the religious fanatics, the Egyptian 'UFO angel’ naturally comes from Mohammed, the Asiatic one from Buddha and the Christian one directly from Jesus. At the 7th International World Congress of UFO Investigators, in the autumn of 1967, Professor Hermann Oberth, the man known as 'the father of space travel' and the teacher of Wernher von Braun, Two reports from Die Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, for 21 and 23 November, 1967: ‘Belgrade (from our own correspondent)