On This Day in Weird, January 22...
1879: The Battle at Rorke's Drift, Africa's version of the
Alamo, disproves the axiom that God favors the largest battalions.
1946: President Harry Truman creates the Central
Intelligence Group, predecessor of the CIA. Conspiracies go into permanent
overdrive.
1950: Crewmen aboard a Navy patrol plane track two UFOs on
radar, near Alaska's Kodiak Naval Air Station. Visual contact reveals "two
orange lights rotating about a common center like two jet aircraft making slow
rolls in tight formation."
1951: Umpires eject pitcher Fidel Castro from a Winter
League game for beaning a batter. He abandons pro ball to liberate Cuba.
1951: Three Air Force pilots observe a UFO while tracking a
weather balloon over New Mexico's Holloman Air Force Base.
1952: Ground radar tacks a UFO over Nenana, Alaska. A Navy
aircraft chases another object southeast of Mitchell AFB, N.Y.
1953: UFOs appear over Patrick AFB in Florida and Harmon AFB
in Newfoundland. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports: "A fireball
expert said today Russia may be scouting the United States and other parts of
the world with strange new guided missiles. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz said a good many
shreds of evidence point to green fireballs sighted throughout the world being a
type of missile—possibly of Soviet make."
1956: A Pan American Airways flight engineer reports a large
UFO passing his aircraft, over the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, La.
1957: New York police arrest "Mad Bomber" George
Metesky, in the best (some say the only successful) example of forensic
profiling.
1958: CBS TV cuts off UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe in
mid-sentence, on "Armstrong Circle Theatre." Public controversy
ensues, with CBS admitting deliberate censorship but denying an official hand
behind the scenes.
1959: Actress Linda Blair—known for roles in The
Exorcist, Hell Night, and Repossessed, and as the host of TV's The
World's Scariest Places—is born in St. Louis, Mo.
1961: A witness films a UFO passing over Florida's Eglin
AFB.
1962: Ground radar tracks a UFO for 65 minutes, passing over
Kirksville, Mo., at 72,000 feet.
1965: Four adults and a child report an afternoon sighting
of an egg-shaped UFO descending rapidly over Baltimore, Md.
1967: A witness in Providence, N.C., watches one bright UFO
turn into a string of lights that hover and "bob like a cork in
water."
1972: Farmers Lyle and Stewart Leppke spot a lighted object
in their feedlot, prior to dawn. In their flashlight beams, they see a figure
less than two feet tall moving near the grounded object. The craft departs
before police arrive.
1974: A man en route to work sees a "flying
saucer" near a gravel pit in Norton, Mass., later describing a red dome
atop a supporting structure shaped "like a child's swimming pool."
1984: A United Airlines flight crew sees a UFO at 43,000
feet, east of Toledo, Ohio, at 7:25 a.m. Twelve hours later, nearly
simultaneous sightings occur at Waycross, Ga.; at Arnold, Mo.; and at
Huntington, W. Va.
1989: A low-flying UFO casts a "heavy" beam of
light over Greens Fork, Ind., at 9:30 p.m.
1999: A trawler reports two sightings of a giant squid in
the sea off New Zealand, the first at 43°33′S 174°18′E; the second at
44°08.2'–43°58.5'S 175°20.3'–174°45.5'E.
2002: Dogs bark hysterically at a "fireball"
passing over Salisbury, Md.
2003: A witness driving home from work at 10:03 p.m. sees a
grayish bipedal figure cross the road in front of his car, moving "like an
ape walks." On the far side of the road, it waves thin arms and lights
blaze on behind it, revealing the things foot-long pointed ears and a mouth
with a "red silver strip" across the upper lip.
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