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1:30 o’clock, and it is believed that the brilliant light was caused by the searchlight from this mysterious airship. Other witnesses in the same area reported seeing strange lights maneuvering over some nearby mountains, And one group said they had seen “‘a titanic white bird” at a distance of about five miles. ‘‘As it was clearly impossible, even in the desert air, to see a bird at that distance, they, too, have been pondering the case and come to the conclusion that what they saw was the airship making its way over the desert,” the newspaper remarked. Winged objects, things with tail fins and propellers, had been reported during the 1896-97 wave, too. The “‘flapping wings’ is a rather unique feature, however, and perhaps the bobbing-falling-leaf motion created some kind of illusion. There is no way of reaching a final assessment on meant Af thann ancl. Annan most of these early cases. Based upon my study of modern sightings versus published reports, it is very possible that many people on the West Coast were seeing UFOs throughout the early 1900s but that very few of these ever made their way into print. The spotty clippings that have been uncovered to date do suggest a continuing flap of unsuspected proportions. The year 1908 brought a minor flap to Tacoma, Washington, and the same area of the Puget Sound that would play an important part in the Maury Island ‘“‘hoax”’ (a sighting which preceded Kenneth Amold’s by three days) thirty-nine years later. On Saturday, February 1, 1908, and again on the next night between the hours of 7 and 9, a brilliant reddish object ‘“‘two or three times as bright as Jupiter” passed over Kent, Washington, and was seen by many. Some described it as being cigar- shaped. A story in the Tacoma, Washington, Daily Ledger (February 4, 1908) added, ‘‘During the same week, onclear nights, colored lights were displayed at high altitudes, and on one occasion a rocket was discharged high in the air, it is asserted.”’ The light was viewed by the populaces of many of the towns along its route. Some newspapers suggested that it was a Japanese spy craft of some sort. (The Russo-Japanese war had taken place three years earlier, and the ‘Yellow Peril’ was a popular topic of racial bigots on the West Coast.) On June 30, 1908, the now-famous ‘‘meteor’’ exploded over Siberia. The next summer, in mid-July 1909, residents in the thinly populated Blue Mountains of New Zealand began to see a ‘‘cigar-shaped or boat- shaped’’ object cruising their skies. One account from the Otago, New Zealand, Daily Times described it this way: “It did not appear to be very Flexible Phantoms of the Sky / 97