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phenomena and all catastrophes were blamed on a Superior Being. Today we kneel before the altar of science, and our scientific ignorance receives the blame for what we do not know or cannot understand. The game’s the same, only the rules have changed slightly. We no longer run to the temple when we see a strange, unearthly object in the sky. We run to the Air Force or to the learned astronomers. In ancient times the priests would tell us that we had sinned, and therefore God was showing us signs in the sky. Today our learned leaders simply tell us that we are mistaken—or crazy—or both. The next time we see something in the sky, we keep it to ourselves. But the damnable things keep coming back anyway. Maybe they Never went away. The first photograph of an unidentified flying object was taken back in 1883 by a Mexican astronomer named Jose Bonilla. He had been observing the sun from his observatory at Zacatecas on August 12 of that year when he was taken aback by the sudden appearance of a long parade of circular objects that slowly flitted across the solar disk. Altogether he counted 143 of the things, and because his telescope was equipped with a newfangled gadget called a camera, he shot some pictures of them. When developed, the film showed a series of cigar- and spindle-shaped objects which were obviously solid and noncelestial. Professor Bonilla dutifully wrote up a scholarly report of the event filled with mathematical calcula- tions (he estimated that the objects had actually passed over the earth at an altitude of about 200,000 miles), attached copies of his pictures and sent the whole thing off to the French journal L’Astronomie. His col- leagues no doubt read it with chagrin, and because they could not explain what he had seen, they forgot about the whole business and turned to more fruitful pursuits—such as counting the rings of Saturn. Five years before Professor Bonilla’s embarrassing observation, a farmer in Texas reported seeing a large circular object pass overhead at high speed. His name was John Martin, and when he told a reporter from the Dennison, Texas, Daily News about it, he made history of sorts by describing it as a “‘saucer.”” The date of his sighting was Thursday, January 24, 1878. His neighbors probably called him Crazy John after that, never realizing that he was not the first, and certainly would not be the last, to see what had been up there all along. In April 1897, thousands of people throughout the United States were seeing huge “‘airships’’ over their towns and farms. Scores of witnesses even claimed to have met and talked with the pilots. According to the New York Herald, Monday, April 12, 1897, a news dealer in Rogers Park, To Hell with the Answer! / 29