Video from We Travel by Night
The Phantom Airship Mystery of 1897: What Did the Americans See?
"In the last years of the 19th Century, the public looked to the skies in excited anticipation of powered flight. The dream of manned flight had teased humanity for centuries, and now it seemed the dream was on the cusp of becoming a reality. And so when the good people of California, Nebraska, Wisconsin Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois, gazed up into the night sky and saw a mysterious airship, there was amazement. Yet, this phantom airship vanished into history, and we still don’t know who was behind it. What happened in the skies over the United States in 1896 and 1897? What is the truth behind the phantom airship seen by 100,000 people?
In this video, we will trace the phantom airship’s course across America, and ponder over three theories that might, or might not, explain this mystery.
Incidentally, the USA map in this video is the Rand, McNally & Co., 1903 population map. The Nebraska map is from the same company and era.
Pixabay images: Matthias Groeneveld, Aaron Sandford, & Mike.
Pixabay videos: Hank Photo, FindingFootage, Christian Bodhi, Timofey Iasinskii, Felix Mittermeier, Matthias Groeneveld, Jeongwoo Kim, & Jarek Fethke.
Pixabay music: 'Digital Ambient for Meditation', by Sergey Safikanov.
For those who like to know these things:
Robert E. Bartholomew, ‘The Airship Hysteria of 1896-97’, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14, (Winter 1990), pp. 171-181, and Robert E. Bartholomew, ‘Michigan and the Great Mass Hysteria Episode of 1897’, Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, (Spring, 1998), pp. 133-141." from the video introduction
Comments