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darken, then it accelerated very swiftly and disappeared toward the west at terrific speed.” The next thing he knew, he was speeding along the road. He had absolutely no recollection of starting up the car and driving off again. Later he discovered that his watch—an expensive Omega chronometer— was unaccountably five minutes slow. He decided to report the incident to the authorities and voluntarily submitted to a psychiatric testing. His story was published in the West Australian, November 1, 1967, but his name was not used. Unearthly beams of light, sudden automobile failures, disturbing lapses of time and memory:S all of these are commonplace minor elements in our UFO mystery. But let’s go back to the puzzling historical sightings so that we may gain a better view of the overall picture. There were, of course, many observations of unusual aerial objects between 1897 and 1909. Thanks to the efforts of Lucius Farish and his colleagues we have an impressive sampling of these early reports to work with. The reliability of some of the newspaper accounts can certainly be questioned, but the tongue-in-cheek journalistic jokes are quite transpar- ent, at least to someone who grew up in the newspaper business. A minor airship flap broke out in California in 1905. On Wednesday, August 2, 1905, J. A. Jackson, ‘‘a well-known resident of Silshee,’’ was out at 1:30 in the morning when a bright light appeared in the sky and headed for him. According to the. account published in the Brawley, California, News (August 4, 1905): He watched it closely until behind the light there appeared the form of an airship, apparently about 70 feet in length, with a searchlight in front and several other lights aboard, The mysterious machine appeared to be propelled by wings alone and rose and fell as the wings flapped like a gigantic bird. Apparently there was no balloon attachment as is usually the case with airships. Mr. Jackson, being close to the home of W. E. Wilsie, woke him up in time to see the lights of the machine before it disappeared. . . . The same night, H. E. Allatt, postmaster at Imperial, was awakened from sleep by a bright light shining into his room. There was no moon, the light was thought to be a fire, and Mr. Allatt rose to investigate, but no fire was found. Looking at his watch, the time was discovered to be 96 / Operation Trojan Horse The Flap of 1909