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1871, was ignited when Mrs. O‘Leary’s discontented cow kicked over a lantern, and we forget that that fire was actually caused by a gigantic still unexplained fireball that swept low across the skies of several states, destroying dozens of communities and creating a kind of death and havoc which would not be seen again until the great fire raids of World War II.* A thousand years from now Hitler may be remembered as a somewhat eccentric manufacturer of soap. And man’s clumsy, stiff-legged attempt to leap into space may merely supplement the older tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun on wings of wax. We are more enthralled with our interpretations of great events than with the events themselves, and we gingerly alter the facts generation after generation until history reads the way we think it should read. If you want to believe the fancy-ridden scribes who have painstakingly recorded their versions of man’s long history, you may be ready to accept the fact that unidentified flying objects have always been up there. Certainly the histories and legends of every country and every race, including the isolated Eskimos, are filled with stories of inexplicable aerial happenings. How valid is our history, and where is the point that history and myth intermingle and become one? Several great religions have been founded on the contents of the Holy Bible. Millions of people have accepted it as truth—as the Gospel—for the past 2,000 years. Yet the Bible gives us several different and contradictory versions of the same events, including the life and death of Christ, all purportedly written by eyewitnesses and all of them different in many significant details. Which is the true account? The devout accept them all. Few believers would reject the existence of Christ because of these differences. Unlike most UFO researchers, I have read the Bible carefully several times. In view of what we now know-—or suspect—about flying saucers, many of the Biblical accounts of things in the sky take on a new meaning and even corroborate some of the things happening today. They were given a religious interpretation in those ancient days when all natural In Chapter Four of his book Mysterious Fires and Lights, researcher Vincent H. Gaddis documented the spectacular and disastrous fires that swept across Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. Wisconsin suffered the greatest loss of life, with 1,500 deaths recorded in Green Bay alone on that horrible night. Four times as many people were killed in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, as in Chicago. 28 / Operation Trojan Horse