1887 Report: Fallen UFO is Blue Metallic Sphere

Good Mornin' All,

The following newspaper article is from July 23, 1887; it describes a Georgia doctor witnessing what he initially believes to be a meteor crashing to earth; after retrieving it he discovers it is a perfectly round, polished, blue metallic sphere with pictures and strange writing on it.

It is presumed by the witness, a doctor, that the object is extraterrestrial . . . but could it be man-made?

If life on this planet advanced "in the past" (before a global disaster wiped them out) in a similar path as it has in more recent history, is it possible that our ancestors launched satellites into orbit as we are doing today? Is what this man found in 1887, a satellite that became the victim of a decaying orbit?

There are other historic articles similar to this one, as well as one describing a "compartmented craft" . . . an ancient "space station" perhaps?

The rest of the story . . .

Cheers,
Frank

Nice story! It makes you wonder what the Smithsonian ever did with it. It may have come from Earth's past or future or somewhere else altogether. I also wonder what else the Smithsonian has locked up and out of view.

Originally posted by Frank Warren
If life on this planet advanced "in the past" (before a global disaster wiped them out) in a similar path as it has in more recent history, is it possible that our ancestors launched satellites into orbit as we are doing today? Is what this man found in 1887, a satellite that became the victim of a decaying orbit?
Frank

That is an interesting take on it Frank. I have often contemplated that angle. There are reports of fossilized micro-chips or electronics of some sort found in rock. I suppose it is possible, that the "UFO's" we are seen in increasing frequency, may actually be US... from the future, looking back on where we went wrong?

Monteriano, you make another excellent point....how many artifacts, from other worlds or other species, are being hidden away from us....regardless of the reason, things of this nature belong to the PEOPLE. Not some group of cryptic old men, huddled in a dark office discussing how and where they should hide it from the world.



[edit on 30-3-2008 by 1nL1ghtened]

If true, where is it now? It's not on display is it? Can someone get ahold of the Smithsonian to find out if they have it? Or ever had it?

1nL1ghtened,

Originally posted by 1nL1ghtened

Originally posted by Frank Warren
If life on this planet advanced "in the past" (before a global disaster wiped them out) in a similar path as it has in more recent history, is it possible that our ancestors launched satellites into orbit as we are doing today? Is what this man found in 1887, a satellite that became the victim of a decaying orbit?
Frank

That is an interesting take on it Frank. I have often contemplated that angle. There are reports of fossilized micro-chips or electronics of some sort found in rock. I suppose it is possible, that the "UFO's" we are seen in increasing frequency, may actually be US... from the future, looking back on where we went wrong?

There is evidence that "modern man" has been around a lot longer then academia would like us to believe. Additionally, we know there have been "global disasters that have taken out entire species," e.g., the dinosaurs, etc.

We know that man has the ability to advance rapidly, in this instance from a technological standpoint, take the last 100 years for example; with that in mind, if man was around and at a similar level of advancement (as we are now), it's not a stretch to conceive the notion that we put spacecraft in orbit in the past . . . and what goes up must come down.

Cheers,
Frank

There is a theory that the first contact or evidence humanity receives from another civilization will be its "trash" that has floated randomly through space, preserved for near eternity, in the cold near vacuum of space. Say a spaceship explodes 100 light years from earth. While the occupants would never survive that time and distance (as we currently understand it), the debris from that accident will persist forever, or until it hits an atmosphere, sun, black hole, or crash lands on earth. Nowhere did I say this was likely, just that it could happen, as its a theory to contemplate.

Or it could be a van Neumann probe, ala 2001. Probably misspelled that poor guys name, but it's the idea thats important.

Anyways, thanks for the link, off to actually read it now.

I doubt the Smithsonian has it now,prolly in some deep dark room in the pentagon or a DUMB,or area 51.

Thanks to the OP for posting this here on ATS. I have looked at the newspaper cliping and find it very interesting. I think that the object, whatever it is, has long since disappeared or is in 'cold storage'. Or there might be another possibility. If they still had it in 1947 when the Roswell UFO crashed, they may have taken it out of cold storage and compared the two for a comparison. With the top scientific and military brains working on them, they reverse engineered a lot of the instruments and machinery and figured out how they worked. That is how we were able to advance so rapidly technology wise from the late forties through the early 1970's. This is what I think on this anyway.

Excellent find Frank. I've never heard anything about this before! You've got a knack for digging into history. I'll be following this thread to see if you get any follow-up. If you need someone to write a supporting letter to the Smithsonian, let me know!

-WFA

Great find; flag from me.

What jumps out at me is the reptile with bird wings logo on the object. This reminds me of quetzalcoatl, the mayan god. Quetzalcoatl is often referred to as The Feathered Serpent and was connected to the planet Venus. Also, I've read quite a few abduction/contactee reports, and a very common symbol that the abductors wear is of a reptile with bird wings. Very interesting correlation.

Great find, thanks for the post!

As everyone else that has posted....I wonder...where or where did the object go? You always hear of so many things ending up in museum basements, gathering dust for decades then found by some enthusiastic PhD candidate or intern...

Wonder if that's the case or it was confiscated by the powers that be?

[edit on 31-3-2008 by LateApexer313]

PS. If I had found the object, they would have had to pry it from my cold dead fingers!

[edit on 31-3-2008 by LateApexer313]

That story was actually pretty intriguing. Starred and flagged.

It may be possible to identify, at least partially, the metal used in this thing, from the emission spectra info given in the article:

"three fine yellow lines to the left of the sodium D line a broad green one to the right of the line of barium and innumerable fine purple lines"

if we could find a material matching this spectra that is
1) metallic (as described)
2) very tough (to survive the reentry)
3) very heat resistant (same reason)
4) relatively rare, at least back then (so as to be unknown to the guy with the spectrosope

it would go a long way to validating this story.

perhaps titanium or some alloy of it?


here is a link to the spectrum's for some common elements, including sodium and barium

www.amateurspectroscopy.com...

note aluminium possibly has the required 3 fine yellow (to orange) lines to
the left of what I assume is the sodium D line.

calcium has a broad green one and 3 in the orange.

dont think either would be rare enough to consider unknown to this person though.
too bad titanium is not shown...

Does anyone know how newspapers were printed back in those days before computers? The reason I ask is that the text has large gaps in it in places where it has been 'justified'. Would this have been done or even possible back in the 1800s?

@fiftyfifty - Of course it was possible back in the 1800's. Don't they teach printing in schools anymore? Anyways, a set of type comes with various sizes of spacers so that when the type is set by hand it can be justified into blocks. This particular article looks like the type may have been setup by more than one printer (very common considering how long it takes to hand set type). I've set my fair share of type and I would say that the printer put the spacers in to justify the type top to bottom so it would lock up better. Most just put the extra spacers at the end of the block but sometimes for looks it will be added in the middle (so as not to leave the last row of text with just one word or a hyphenated word.

wasn't this roughly the same ear of the 'airship wave' or 'airship craze?' and it was close on the heels of percival lowell discovering canals on mars and creating that flap.

while there are some odd reports from that period which sound legit, newspapers were known to print crazy stunt articles for some reason. the story about the airship lassoing some poor farmer's cow comes to mind. but i've read several along that same vein.

a few things catch my eye here as being just 'not right' for lack of a finer description:

(1) the object impacted the ground and buried itself to a depth of 5 feet . . . that's a pretty good amount of soil to impact through. the kinetics of that type of impact are just off the charts and would certainly leave a hole larger than 4" as an entry point.

(2) one of the good doctor's first attempts at examining the sphere included him attempting to melt it with his bunson burner? i can't think of any common metal that would melt at such a low temp, but hey, you can always try i guess.

(3) my major gripe with #2 is that the doctor notes that the sphere was still 'perfectly' spherical after impacting through 5' of earth, and was unexpectedly heavy. this would be one very hard and dense metal . . . so what kind of file could he use to file off pieces of it for chemical analysis? i suspect filing alone would not accomplish much more than quickly reaching your exasperation point.

still an interesting read and you get a star from me for that. i love this stuff.

if it ever existed, was it sent to the smith and what happened from there? well, lot's of conspiracy theorists grind their axe against the smith and it's propensity to 'lose' items of extraordinary historical note in the 19th century. giant bones come to mind along with other burial mound artifacts.

but agreed, i'd like to know if that limited bit of chemical analysis lines up with any of today's alloys.

that would be interesting.

reply to post by thecandyman


Thanks, I didn't know that and no, they didn't teach printing when I was at school, I don't suppose theres much of a reason to seeing as we don't rely on 19th century technology for printing anymore! Thanks for the info anyhow, it has put my doubt to rest.

There doesnt seem to be any other material on this article anywhere.

No follow up, no corresponding articles, no repsonse by Smithsonian, no Dr Seyer demanding his ball back. No pictures.

Even the reporter hasnt actually seen it and is reporting what they've heard

As for the chemist stating "it is a new element", no new elements were reported around that point in time (the next elements added to the table in 1898)

I say Very Olde Hoax

star supplied

[edit on 31-3-2008 by Mark Roazhar]

Good Day SecretGoldfish,

Originally posted by SecretGoldfish
wasn't this roughly the same ear of the 'airship wave' or 'airship craze?' and it was close on the heels of percival lowell discovering canals on mars and creating that flap.

while there are some odd reports from that period which sound legit, newspapers were known to print crazy stunt articles for some reason. the story about the airship lassoing some poor farmer's cow comes to mind. but i've read several along that same vein.

The "airship craze" as you put it, started in Sacramento in 1896-97, and Lowell made his map/globe of Mars in 1901; however, it was astronomer, "Giovanni Schiaparelli" who gets the credit for seeing the lines (first), or "canali" that Lowell later attributed to "intelligent design," see "Mars as the Abode of Life" by Lowell in 1908.

Separately, "a hoax" of course cannot be ruled out; however, one wonders what the motives would be.

a few things catch my eye here as being just 'not right' for lack of a finer description:

(1) the object impacted the ground and buried itself to a depth of 5 feet . . . that's a pretty good amount of soil to impact through. the kinetics of that type of impact are just off the charts and would certainly leave a hole larger than 4" as an entry point.

[Playing devil's advocate] This of course would depend entirely on the soil.

(2) one of the good doctor's first attempts at examining the sphere included him attempting to melt it with his bunson burner? i can't think of any common metal that would melt at such a low temp, but hey, you can always try i guess.

(3) my major gripe with #2 is that the doctor notes that the sphere was still 'perfectly' spherical after impacting through 5' of earth, and was unexpectedly heavy. this would be one very hard and dense metal . . . so what kind of file could he use to file off pieces of it for chemical analysis? i suspect filing alone would not accomplish much more than quickly reaching your exasperation point.

The article of course touts some sort of "new" or "unknown metal" and or "element"; by default the "properties" would be "unknown." Still, a dense piece of metal and or iron, can still be shaved and or filed.

still an interesting read and you get a star from me for that. i love this stuff.

As I do . . ..

if it ever existed, was it sent to the smith and what happened from there? well, lot's of conspiracy theorists grind their axe against the smith and it's propensity to 'lose' items of extraordinary historical note in the 19th century. giant bones come to mind along with other burial mound artifacts.

True, the anecdotes of the Smithsonian burying "history's mysteries" is legendary; I know of one case where artifacts were reported to be carted off by the Smithsonian, and when contacted by a researcher, the official response was one of ignorance.

Cheers,
Frank