Mystery 'aeroplanes' seen near Lake Superior in 1916

摘要

Superior, WI, and Duluth, MN, sister cities on opposite sides of the St. Louis River at Lake Superior's western tip, were gripped by a now almost forgotten UFO wave in February, 1916. Duluth and Superior citizens reported mysterious lights and "aeroplanes" in the sky, on one occasion seeing three "men" aboard a machine. It was in the middle of World War I, and while the United States was still neutral, the mysterious "aeroplanes" inspired fears of bombing. Workers in a local munitions plant even stayed home out of fear of their factory being bombed. Back in 1916, very few people thought about extraterrestrial visitors, so strange aerial lights and contraptions were ascribed to secretive inventors or to foreign spies, saboteurs, or bombers. Finally, in a curious anticipation of the Air Force's response to Roswell some 31 years later, the mystery was "solved" when a couple of Duluth watchmen found the remnants of a crashed home-made toy balloon, "proving" the lights and "aeroplanes" to have been a practical joke by pranksters perpetrating a hoax.