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26 Over the next week, the mysterious airship continued to appear. Five days later, on November 22, 1896, dozens of passengers on an Oakland streetcar observed an object that looked like a “wingless ci- gar.” The object emitted beams of light and traveled slowly overhead. Again, the account became front-page news. Before long, the wave spread across the United States, with thou- sands of people reporting the strange zeppelin-like objects. In a few of the cases, witnesses encountered human-looking people who were dressed strangely and spoke unknown languages. At first, people assumed that these airships were coming from for- eign countries, such as Cuba. Again, the idea of aliens visiting Earth from outer space was still largely unknown. Today, the mysterious airship wave remains unexplained. Some researchers believe that the sightings may have been the result of early undercover experiments with dirigibles, zeppelins, and other airships. And in fact, only one year later, on November 3, 1897, timber merchant David Schwarz of the Austro- Hungarian Empire invented and successfully flew an airship. Other researchers have a stranger explanation for the airship mys- tery. They say that UFOs are actually putting on different masks for each culture, and may actually be some sort of interdimensional visi- tors and not extraterrestrials at all. The best evidence for this theory is the fact that UFOs do seem to appear different in each culture. For example, the many cases of fairies and elves in the medieval times may have been actual fairies and elves, actual aliens that people just thought were fairies or elves, or perhaps another mask worn by the interdimensional beings. Explanations for these phenomena are not always easy. During the middle of World War II in 1943 and 1944, numerous fighter pilots began to see what they called “foo fighters,” or small balls of light that followed their aircraft. At first, everyone assumed UFOS AND ALIENS “FOO FIGHTERS”