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explainers and hoaxsters moved in. Professor George Hough of North- western University blamed Venus at first. But later he said, ‘‘Alpha Orionis has been roaming through its regular course in the firmament ten million years, and why it should have been settled upon in the last three weeks, and pointed out as the headlight of a mysterious aerial vehicle, is hard to explain” (Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1897). An electrician named A. H. Babcock built a large box kite and sent it skyward on November 26, 1896 over Oakland, California, setting off a new rash of airship reports there. (San Francisco, California, Chronicle, November 27, 1896). And paper balloons filled with gas entertained others all over the country. “Anything from Jupiter to the moon was picked out as an airship by the credulous people,’ the Portland, Oregon, Oregonian observed on November 25, 1896. “Early in the evening a fire balloon went sailing through the air, and the newspapers were overwhelmed by telephone messages from people in various parts of the city who thought they had discovered the mysterious airship.” Newspapers that weren’t receiving any reports blithely made up some to fill the gap. The Hudson Gazette at Hudson, Michigan, ran a long piece that quoted every prominent citizen in the town (“It was quite a bit larger than the Republican majority in Hudson,” said Plim Gilman). When the editor of the Adrian, Michigan, Weekly Times and Expositor received his copy of the Gazerte, he ordered his Hudson correspondent to look into the matter. On April 17, the Weekly Times and Expositor printed (with relish, nan Ana. no doubt): The sensational report of the airship having been seen by many reputable citizens of this place turns out to be a huge fake. Hudson did Not propose to be behind the times, so one of our enterprising editors set his imagination to work and produced a half-column sensation. The airship is very likely as filmy as the aforesaid article. More bizarre explanations were offered, too. In discussing the ‘“‘mov- ing lights of fires...said to have been seen nightly on Saginaw Bay off Caseville during the past week,” the Benton Harbor, Michigan, Evening News noted on April 1, 1897 that “the superstitious believe that they are produced by the ghosts of those who were lost with the steamer Oconto which was wrecked on Big Charity Island a few years ago.” A “wheel” fell out of the sky near Battle Creek, Michigan, and was retrieved by a well-to-do farmer named George Parks. Parks and his wife The Grand Deception / 73