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UFO Patrol The years 1879 and 1880 partook of the general spiciness of the era of the comets. The astronomical profession did not work up any major fracases, but then you cannot have a riot every year. However, things did happen. The There was the house whose roof suddenly took its departure on Easter Sunday of 1879 — a slate roof. It jumped up into the air suddenly and then fell back on to the ground. Beyond ten meters from the house nothing was disturbed. There wasn't the least bit of wind. This was officially recorded in the French science magazine, La Nature 1879. There are other cases of roofs taking off without provocation. An American case was reportedly similar. On July 10, 1880, the conservative Scientific American broke its editorial policy of reticence regarding abnormal events and noted that some men were working in a field in Ontario when they saw stones shooting upward — without the aid of a whirlwind or any other obvious cause. Something seemed to be disturbing gravity. long. Bright spots or lights continued to be seen on the moon in 1879-80, and the disturbances on the surface of Jupiter were so noteworthy as to cause comment in Nature. There were five comets visible in 1879 and six in 1880, although not all were visible to the naked eye. A green thunderbolt was reported in the Scientific American, and we are thereby reminded of the spate of green thunderbolts over New Mexico during the past three or four years. The sako Banjo meteorite, which fell in Eastern Europe in the quite incredibly active years of 1879 — 80, was a strange and startling new kind of meteoric stone, and there were darkness, sun darkening, and abnormally cold winter weather. The Great Red Spot continued to evolve and to maintain its merciless drive around the great globe of that planet. Because of its peculiar shape and movement, one could almost imagine a great interstellar space ship landing and floating on Jupiter's surface. Its size makes this a debatable hypothesis. But there was one astronomical event, which escaped general notice by being in the freak class. Only in retrospect is its significance revealed, for it was one of those dogs which seldom get reported except by naive folk who think that what they see is what they see. There have been several reports of misty, fiery or cometary objects, which exhibited unusual motion. Often times, our attention is only attracted to them by unusually rapid movement, but even this has some statistical value and may signify the proximity of the object to earth. Such a report was telegraphed by Russian Astronomers in the early 1920's and was said to be moving ten degrees per hour. However, some alert observers have been acute enough to note motion which was too erratic to partake of the normal characteristics of meteoric or cometary activity, and only now are we awakening to the possibility that such erratic movement may signify direction and control by intelligence. One of the most outstanding examples of erratic celestial movement was that noted by observer Henry Harrison, of Jersey City, New Jersey, on the night of April 12 and 13, 1879. He took careful settings and times on an object whose motion is arevelation. Harrison reported this event to the Naval Observatory at Washington by telegram, but the notice was disregarded by Director Hall, with the proper 146 On April 9, 1879, slag was reported to fall in the city of Chicago. There were many falls of ice in 1879 — some at Richmond England, was in chunks five inches Would he believe it when he sees it?