New York PM, July 9, page 5 |
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Comments Although without UP attribution and heavily rewritten, misspelling's and various news items betray the stories UP origins. As with other rewritten wire service stories in big city dailies, the tone of the article is smug and sarcastic. (New York PM later became the New York Star.) UP in the initial press release said residents near the ranch reported a "strange blue light" several days before. A balloon hardly "explains" this. The derisive tone of the article is set immediately. UP's characteristic misspelling of Brazel's name. The "blue light" is also UP, though UP never reported it "streaking through the sky." Sheriff Wilcox claiming Brazel said the object was as big as the office safe was another early UP item. UP also reported incorrectly Ramey's middle initial as "B". AP, however, got it right. ("M.") The last thing to be reported by many morning papers who went to press before the official weather balloon ID announced 1-1/2 hours later. Note here Ramey is said to be shipping it to Wright Field because he was ordered to do so. ** A unque item. Ramey explicity identifies the debris before anybody else had been allowed to see it. Ramey's quoted early identification, also reported in the UP San Francisco News and New Mexico Press stories. The story ends with the mostly "silly-season" stories ridiculing the phenomenon. The insinuation with statements like this is that only drunks were making the reports. Another example of Orville Wright's cynical and widely reported remarks. |
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Army Has a Tough Day But Corrals Its Flying Saucer Which Explains the Blue Light That Streaked Over Roswell, N.M. By James T. Howard (From the bleachers) The saucer-silly segment of the U. S. public was bending its collective neck skyward for a glimpse of a flying saucer-- and getting a bit bored withal--when up spoke Army Information at Roswell, N.M., to say flatly that it had retrieved one . But, also no sooner had the flying disc been recovered from W. W. Brizell's [sic] ranch near Roswell--after neighbors had seen a blue light streaking through the sky--then the Army at Roswell was sorry to say they didn't have the disc any more . It had passed on "to higher headquarters," was all the man would say. Rancher Brizell, who has no phone, couldn't be reached, and all the Sheriff George Wilcox knew about it was that Brizell had told him about a silvery object--"big as your office safe"--that had fallen from the sky. Wilcox referred the rancher to the Army which took over. Higher Headquarters "Higher headquarters" proved to be Brig. Gen. Roger B. Ramey [sic], Air-Force commander at Fort Worth, Tex., who had the Roswell "saucer" last night and was preparing to ship it to the laboratory at Dayton, O., because still higher authorities had so ordered . Ramey said he couldn't let anybody look at the thing or photograph it because Washington had clamped a "security lid" on all but the sketchiest details . "The object," he said, "is in my office right now and as far as I can see there is nothing to get excited about. It looks to me like the remnant of a weather balloon and a radar reflector." Something Suspicious Bob Scott, of Hillsboro, Tex., reported finding a disc-like object that gleamed like tin foil in his garden after hearing a swish last Friday--which, by the way, was the Fourth of July. The object began to disintegrate when he touched it and there wasn't much left when the press arrived . Meanwhile: * Reports of flying saucers being seen have been received from all 48 States, the District of Columbia, Canada and Mexico, with dry Kansas last across the wire. Deal, England, and Sidney, Australia, were added starters. * At Dayton, O., Orville Wright, 75, co-inventor of the aeroplane, said the flying saucer craze was "propaganda dished up by the Government to support the current State Dept. campaign to get us into another war." * At Pittsburgh, Conrad Dunbar testified under oath that he saw flying saucers--and got a divorce on the grounds that Mrs. Dunbar threw them . * Oslo, Norway, cabled passengers on the Kornsjo-Halden express looking out windows and saw, not flying saucers, but a tropical South Sea island, complete with palm trees, blue lagoon and little white houses on a sandy beach . * At San Francisco, a designer designed a flying saucer hat for milady with a 12-inch disc which, he says, will spin silently if the wind is in the right direction . * At Hartford, Conn., Mayer Paul J. Motto issued a proclamation calling on the public to cease "useless speculation on the cause of this widespread illusion." O. K., Mr. Motto. |
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