800 Biharis See Flying Saucer
"The Times of India" News Service

CALCUTTA, October 2.

A flying saucer was reported to have been seen recently by about 800 people living in three adjoining villages in Manbhum, Bihar.

Mr. Ijapada Chatterjee, 60-year-old manager of a mica mine at Kadori owned by a Calcutta business man, Mr. S. N. Ghose, told "The Times of India" News Service here to-day that he was sitting in the verandah of his house on the afternoon of September 15, when he saw a disc-like object descending about 500 yards away.

Villagers came out from their huts to see the strange sight. Shaped like a saucer, it came down to a height of about 500 feet above the earth making a sound like the whirring of motor-car engine. It hovered for a few minutes; then, suddenly, the two sides seemed to get inflated. This was followed by what looked like smoke billowing from the two ends. Immediately the object soared upwards at an incredible speed.

GREY IN COLOUR

Mr. Chatterjee said that the object was about 12 feet in diameter and dull grey in colour. At the centre of the side visible to him was a black patch that resembled an aperture. "As it soared upward, there was a tremendous gust of wind which caused doors and windows to rattle," he said.

Later, the people from the adjoining villages of Borsi and Mangalda also said that they had seen the same object. A sadhu of Mangalda, after seeing the object, was stated to have warned the people to stay indoors as the object was "something from heaven".

The mine where the saucer was sighted has supplied berylium for the Atomic Energy Commission.

Mr. Chatterjee is in Calcutta on a business visit.

Flying Saucers Over Bombay

SEEN BY SEVERAL PEOPLE
By A Staff Reporter

Several people saw flying saucers in the southern and northern sky of Bombay twice during the last five days.

Mr. D. G. Joshi, a business man residing at Agre Wadi, Vithaibhai Patel Road, said that he was relaxing on the sands at Chowpatty on Thursday night last. At ten minutes past midnight, he saw a luminous flying disc, moving at a terrific speed across the sky from Colaba to Dadar.

"At first I thought it was a falling star; then I knew that it was something else as it did not follow the downward course towards the earth.

"It was approximately one foot diameter. Its centre was jet black, but it emitted a glow at the circumference. Its rear portion shone brightly and it emitted what appeared like wreaths of fire."

Mr. Joshi said that the saucer traced a straight course, its speed was terrific, and it left no smoke or sound, vanishing in the northern sky within a second.

At least a hundred people saw the flying saucer without knowing what it was, Mr. Joshi said.

A science student of St. Xavier's College, Mr. Michael Jacob, 18, residing at Sussex Road, Byculla, also claimed to have sighted a flying saucer, at 12:35 p.m. on Monday while he was taking a stroll outside his bungalow with a friend.

He described it as a "sparkling disc of the size of a crown coin which swept across the northern sky and disappeared in a second.

Mr. Jacob said that the saucer was extremely high and he was amazed that it could be visible in the bright light.

Thais See "Devil Disc In Sky"
"U.P.A." & The Times of India" News Service

BANGKOK, October 16.

Thousands of citizens of Bangkok and Thomburi watched a bright object moving slowly tens of thousands of feet overhead from noon to 6 p.m. yesterday. Today's morning papers put out banner headlines reading: "City excited over devil disc."

A U.P.A. correspondent who watched the object for half an hour said: "It has a pinprick light like a planet's - it was not twinkling like a star but was glowing. The object moved slowly across the heavens. It was an absolute movement because I checked it with the clouds."

Rear Admiral Charoon V. Vunnag, Chief of the Naval Meteorological Department, said that the Department observed the phenomenon but could not identify it yet. He added that he had received a report from Korat, in North-Eastern Thailand, about this same phenomenon ten days ago.

'FLYING SAUCER' OVER BOMBAY
By A Staff Reporter

A luminous object in the sky attracted the attention of thousands of Bombay's citizens on Sunday between 7-45 and 8 p.m. The disc, of the size of a star, was red in colour and speeded across from west to east at a great altitude.

Some described it as a "flying saucer" and others stated that it was a shooting star. Meteorologists were unable to explain the phenomenon.

Meteorologists Scan Sky

"FLYING SAUCER" REPORTS
By A Staff Reporter

"Flying saucers" have been seen over Bombay so often by many people in the past few days that the phenomenon has passed from the realm of popular speculation to scientific examination.

Reports have been pouring in at the weather forecasting office at Santa Cruz and at the Colaba Observatory from those who had seen "flying saucers," and meteorologists are now scanning the sky to make their own observation.

Most persons who have written to the meteorologists in response to an appeal made through the Press state that the phenomenon lasted a few seconds, but there are some who say that it lasted from 10 to 15 minutes.

Meteorologists are inclined to think that some observers had mistaken meteorites, moving aircraft and balloons sent up by the Meteorological Office for "flying saucers."

NOT A METEORITE

But the description of the phenomenon observed on Sunday evening distinguished it from any likeness of a meteorite. According to observers, an orange-coloured object had been seen moving from north to south.

Meteorites are of extra-terrestrial origin which are somehow drawn into the earth's gravitational field. They move with high velocity through the upper stratosphere and get heated to emit incandescent light.

These sometimes leave unusual glow for a few seconds in the atmosphere. They are otherwise known as shooting stars and their colour is blue, white, yellow, green or red on occasions.

Flying Saucers
To The Editor, "Times of India"

Sir. - On the evening of October 15 at about 7-30 I saw in the sky nearer the northern end of the Milky Way a cluster of stars appear from nowhere and shoot across the whole length of the Milky Way, towards the south, and finally disappear in the direction of the present position of Mars. During its speedy transit the cluster appeared to consist of about six or seven stars interlocked in the form of a necklace by a nebulous shining matter.

The stars of the cluster were shing with varying unsteady intensity. Its speed was that of an average meteor but unlike it, it did not burst into a final flash before fading. If this be the same phenomenon described as flying saucers, I am tempted to attribute it to an astro-celestial origin. I can only say that the cluster shot through the empty space between the Milky Way galaxies and the voids outside the solar system.

V. V. GUPTE
Bombay, October 16.

II.

To The Editor, "Times of India"

Sir. - More fortunate than your staff reporter, I saw not one or two but as many as seven flying saucers yesterday evening, between about 7-30 and 8 p.m. trailing the southern skies from west to east at intervals of a few minutes. They no doubt looked like red stars even as an ordinary lamp will appear from a great distance on a dark night. They were not as bright nor travelled as fast as shooting stars.

Anybody can "fly" his "saucer" for a few annas. (A kite is flown in good breeze after dark. When well on its way, a paper lamp with a lighted candle inside it is tied to the leading thread. The thread is cut when the lamp is carried up by the kite - and a flying saucer appears in the sky! So yesterday's flying saucers over Bombay was nothing but "kite-flying".

M. S. KOTNIS
Bombay, October 18.

FLIGHTS OF FANCY
By PATANJALI SETHI

THE fever has spread. After it having infected Americans, Europeans, Australians and South Africans, the "mass hallucination mania," (as the uncharitable describe it) of seeing glowing cigars and shining saucers in the air has invaded India. Like all mass infections, this latest "weakness of the mind", which imagines things that are not, is worse than suffering under the tutelage of a master hypnotist who drugs people and controls their minds through the powers of his eyes.

Over A Mica Mine

Over 800 people in Manbhum recently saw a dull grey disc-like flying craft, about 12 feet in diameter, hovering over a mica mine which supplies berylium to the Atomic Energy Commission. After a short "survey", it soared up into the heavens at an incredible speed. This was followed by the reported sighting of flying saucers over Bombay, twice in five days, by people in different parts of the city.

Now we can expect another outburst from some of our self-conscious, "morally" inclined leaders against the "vile thoughts that make me see cigars" (which are but the conscious expressions of the sub-conscious desire to inhale smoke from the weed known as tobacco). We might also be condemned for imagining saucers, because "they are mere expressions of the thirst for a brimming cup of overflowing spirits".

Let us forget the moralist for the time being and turn to things more factual. Are flying saucers really the result of people's over-active imagination? That is what most politicians in the U. S. have maintained. Even scientists of some repute have abetted the authorities in asserting that there is nothing like a flying saucer, except in man's mind running into flights of fancy.

Debunking

This may be an easy way of debunking what the mind, limited by present-day scientific knowledge, fails to comprehend; but it is hardly convincing when we consider that over 30,000 incidents have been reported, where hundreds of sane, right-thinking people each time claim to have seen flying saucers. So many people from all over the world cannot all be mistaken. They cannot all be suffering from hallucinations.

In India itself, in 1838, the appearance of flying saucers was reported, when there appeared a flying disc with a long, glowing orange appendage. Then again in 1849, on October 17 and 18, for two full days, an army officer at Bangalore saw through his telescope a stream of small dark objects race across the sky. The procession continued for both the days. One of the discs was studied closely and it had an exhaust appendage like a modern jet plane.

Earlier Mention

That is only in the so-called modern era. There, however, has been much earlier mention of the saucers, in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Termed as vimanas in Sanskrit literature, they were said to be of various kinds and designs, some small for one person, some large like palaces, others used as weapons of destruction. All this goes to prove that it is time we stopped being surprised at flying saucers and cigars, and accepted their existence.