CFZ-USA

This Day in Weird....

Jan. 4, 1785: Jacob Grimm of fairy tale fame is born in Germany.

Jan. 4, 1894: The last official sighting of an eastern cougar is reported from Ontario. Numerous reports of cougar sightings continue throughout eastern North America to the present day, despite official denials.

Jan. 4, 1903: Thomas Alva Edison uses electricity to execute Topsy, an Coney Island circus elephant that had recently killed three men, during his War of Currents publicity campaign against George Westinghouse.

Jan. 4, 1925: French psychologist Emil Coué brings his self-esteem therapy program to the U.S., encouraging thousands to chant, "Every day in every way I am getting better and better."

Jan. 4, 1938: Circus performer "General Tom Thumb" is born in Connecticut.

Jan. 4, 1949: U.S. Air Force Captain Paul Stoney reports an elliptical UFO the size of a T-6 aircraft circling at 3,000 feet above Hickam Field, Hawaii.

Jan. 4, 1954: Red revolving lights hover and move silently at tree-top level over the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, returning to repeat the performance on five successive nights thereafter.

Jan. 4, 1954: A lone witness in the control toward at Marignane Airfield, in the Bouches-du-Rhone Department of France, reports a nocturnal landing by a "round luminous machine" which disappears as he phones for assistance. The next morning, stray bits of metallic debris are found on the runway.

Jan. 4, 1958: A military pilot reports a bright orange UFO flying on a northeast heading somewhere "southwest of Libya."

Jan. 4, 1959: Pilots of three airliners report a basketball-size UFO resembling "a ball of fire with a silver tail" maneuvering at high speed over Taft, California.

Jan. 4, 1974: Two women driving through Berwyn, Illinois, see a UFO hovering 75 feet above the ground. They follow it for a quarter-mile before it rises and speeds away.

Jan. 4, 1975 Witnesses report a UFO cruising over Mariemont, Ohio.

Jan. 4, 1977: A man walking his dog in a pine grove near Carapito Beira Alta, Portugal, sees a metallic object hovering above the ground, with a tall, heavyset humanoid figure standing beside it. Both vanish in a flash of silver light, leaving the witness with recurring migraine headaches. His dog dies in August, its cause of death undetermined.

Jan. 4, 1981: Victor Gialanella's play Frankenstein, including cast members John Carradine and Diane Wiest, opens on Broadway and closes after one critically panned performance.

Jan. 4, 1988: Witnesses report two red spheres about 35 centimeters in diameter maneuvering over a field in Vetterslev, Denmark, for two hours. Melted snow and small footprints are later discovered at the site.

Jan. 4, 1990: Several witness in Mauriac, France, report a back UFO with four legs and two rows of square moving slowly overhead.

Jan. 4, 1992: A farmer plagued by cattle mutilations in Japan's Saga Prefecture hears his dog barking late at night and runs outside to see a white "object" resembling a jellyfish with many tentacles emerging from his barn. Inside, he finds a cow with a compound fracture of one leg.

Jan, 4, 1994: Witnesses report a UFO landing with three figures seen in the craft's doorway, in a field at Tronville-en-Barrois, France. On the same night, a huge triangular UFO hovers near microwave transmission tower dishes in Maplethorpe, England, causing some local televisions to spontaneously switch channels.

Jan. 4, 2003: A busy day and night for large, circular UFOs, with three seen over Rosswood, British Columbia; twelve reported from San Isidro, Texas; eleven seen over Chula Vista, California; and two "chasing" each other above Bayport, New York. That same night, in Fulton, Missouri, Bob Simon wakes to find a tall thin humanoid creature dragging him from bed toward his bedroom window. He grabs a knife from his nightstand and slashes at the intruder, who vanished in a flash of light, leaving Simon with scratches on his body.