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into the sky. direction." The sighting over Paico, Portugal was not isolated by any means. Three days before, and a few hundred miles west of the little country in the Azores Islands, another UFO sighting was reported. The thing appeared drifting slowly over Santa Maria Island and was observed by many of the people on the Island. But shortly after the sighting, some of the most qualified witnesses refused to comment on the sighting, and the entire incident became clouded with an air of secrecy. Aristides Amida, a 31-year-old gardener at the Terra Nostra Hotel, was one of the witnesses. He first saw the object at 4:30 P.M. while cultivating a hotel flowerbed. He paused in his work and happened to gaze "It looked like a balloon to me," he related to news-men for UPI. "Or at least that was my first thought, because it was moving so slowly that it seemed to be standing still. It followed a straight course from southeast to northwest, which was rather surprising because the wind was blowing in just the opposite direction. | turned around and saw that an American guest of the hotel also was looking at that thing." Richard Godbold of New York was on the Azores, assigned to work at the radio facilities of Santa Maria. He worked for the U.S. Air Force Base at Lajes, Azores. "Yes, | saw that thing," he said, "but since | am a radio expert | cannot give you a qualified opinion. It was certainly something, probably a balloon or even something else. Who knows? It was too high to judge it by the naked eye." Angelo de Braga Chaves, a whale spotter from Marvao, had the opportunity to watch the floating object through binoculars. "Seen through binoculars, it was almost like a cylinder floating vertically, but sometimes it was like a moon," Chaves says. "From the southwestern part of the island | got the impression that it was made of transparent plastic and contained something like two lamps. Anyway it was shining in the sun. | noticed that it moved against the wind or at least in a direction which was against the wind blowing at ground level. But that may mean nothing, because at that altitude the wind could be blowing in another