Date: Fri Dec 31 1993 11:12:32 To: Jay Barrymore Subj: GREAT AIRSHIP HOAX P_SKEPTIC - For

Date:   Fri Dec 31 1993  11:12:32
From:   Pete Porro
To:     Jay Barrymore
Subj:   GREAT AIRSHIP HOAX
P_SKEPTIC                      -------------------------------

For those who have asked about the Airship Wave of 1896-97, and the
mysterious sighting, including a classic cattle abduction by the craft.
I think you will find the "rest of the story" interesting. This is the
part that gets forgotten or ignored.

"UFO's and the Limits of Science" Ronald D. Story 1981, Pages 39-40

        Forty-six years later, the tale was finally revealed as a hoax.
        The expose' appeared in a small Kansas weekly, the Buffalo
        Enterprise, in it's January 28, 1943, issue. The obscure article
        was discovered later by UFO writer-researcher Jerome Clark, who
        told the full story in the February,1977, issue of Fate
        magazine. The first breakthrough came when the Buffalo
        Enterprise reprinted Hamilton's tale, which brought a letter
        from Ed F. Hudson, who in 1897 was an editor for the Yates
        Center Farmer's Advocate. Hudson wrote:
        "I had just bought and installed a little gasoline engine, the
        first I believe to come to Yates Center, using it to run my
        machinery replacing the hand-power on the old Country Campbell
        press and kicking the job presses. I invited many of my friends
        into the back shop to see the engine work. Hamilton was one of
        them. He Exclaimed, 'Now they can fly', hence the airship story
        was made up. After we had published it, the story was copied in
        many of the largest newspapers in the country, England, France
        and Germany, some illustraing it with pen-drawn (images by)
        their staff artists. There were also hundreds of inquiries from
        every part of the globe. Soon afterwards there came the various
        experiments in flight, but I have always maintained that Alex
        Hamilton was the real inventor of human flight."

Page 41
        (Ethel L. Shaw, who claims to have been present when Mr. Hamilton
        came home and told them the airship story.)
        "It seems there were a few men round about who had formed a club
        which the called 'Ananias" (Liar's Club). They would get
        together once in a while to see which one could tell the biggest
        story they'd concocted since their last meeting. Well, to my
        knowledge, the club soon broke up after the 'airship and cow'
        story. I guess that one had topped them all and the Hamilton
        family went down in history."
        And so they did, at least among the classics of UFO hoaxdom.