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a relationship, particularly in Europe and South America. Dr. Martin D. Altschuler contributed an interesting paper on earthquake-related UFOs to the Colorado University Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. He cited several Japanese cases in which spheres of light, powerful beams of light, and assorted fireballs appeared before, during or after Japanese earthquakes. He suggested that these phenomena resulted from friction— the slippage of rocks, which is as far-out an explanation as visitors from Mars. If static electricity does build up from the slippage of rocks in fault zones, we should easily be able to detect it and thereby predict forthcom- ing quakes. Alas, this is not the case. Large numbers of UFOs were reported over Algeria shortly after the tragic quakes of September 9 and 26, 1954 (1,100 dead; 2,000 injured). When a very heavy quake shook eleven counties in England on February 11, 1957, five “‘tadpolelike objects’’ were reported over the towns of Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. The former was the epicenter of the quake. The descriptions of the witnesses hardly sound like descriptions of electrical phenomena produced by rocks rubbing together. Flying saucer sightings have been numerous and spectacular around the great San Andreas Fault in California since 1896. Another ‘“‘meteor’’ was followed by earth tremors when it zipped in over the Gulf of Mexico early on the morning of Wednesday, March 27, 1968. It was first sighted by the crew of the tanker Alfa Mex II who described ‘‘two or three objects in the center of a bright ball of fire.” The crew of the Mexican warship Guanajuato also reported seeing a flaming object, and the men of both ships said the waters of the Gulf were churned into fountains of spray after the object passed. This could mean that whatever it was, it was exerting a direct gravitational pull. At 2:10 A.M. that morning, residents in Veracruz, Mexico, about twenty-five miles from the ships’ positions, were awakened by a deafen- ing rumbling noise. “Before I had a chance to realize what was happening,’’ Senora Angelita de Villalobos Arana, forty, told investigators, ‘‘it was as bright as day—and the terrible noise kept on... I felt cool, then cold. The light got brighter.” Within minutes, the streets of Veracruz were filled with hysterical people. They thought the end of the world had arrived as the sky filled with unearthly light and the ground trembled. The strange ‘‘meteor’’ loomed over the scene, seemed to dip toward the ground, then rose again --4 La. ee and shot off. Mr. Ernesto Dominguez, head of the Mexican Department of Mete- 132 / Operation Trojan Horse