The entire world right now is going through a horrible and deadly pandemic with over 180,000,000 people having been infected with COVID-19 and almost 4,000,000 deaths. But this isn’t a new thing as over 20,000 years ago there was another coronavirus infection that hit the eastern part of Asia.

A new study was conducted by researchers from the United States and Australia who analyzed the genomes of over 2,500 people belonging to 26 different worldwide populations. They specifically found the earliest interaction of the human genome with coronavirus infections and those genetic imprints are incredibly still present in the DNA of people currently from East Asia.

Lead author Yassine Souilmi explained that viruses duplicate themselves; however, they don’t have the tools to do that on their own, “So they actually depend on a host, and that’s why they invade a host and then they hijack their machinery to create copies of themselves.” The hijacking on the cells can still be seen in today’s populations which allowed the researchers to pinpoint whose ancestors may have been exposed to a very ancient form of coronavirus.

The experts found specific genomes with signs of ancient coronavirus in five populations located in China, Japan, and Vietnam. It is possible that the virus could have spread to other parts of the world but there is no information so far on whether or not that happened.

In those five specific populations, the researchers discovered that a beneficial mutation had been developed throughout the years that aided in protecting them against coronavirus and gave them a better chance of surviving it. Souilmi explained this further, “Over a long period of time, and along the exposure, this leaves a very, very clear marking in the genomes of their descendants,” adding, “And that’s the signature we actually use to detect this ancient epidemic, and also the timing of this ancient epidemic.”

It is unknown how many people caught the virus, how many died as a result from it, and what type of symptoms they had – was it like a normal flu or something much worse, similar to what we’re currently dealing with? Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that coronavirus hit a part of the world over 20,000 years ago and it is now doing the same thing but much, much worse.

The study was published in Current Biology where it can be read in full.

Over the course of several months between the final weeks of 1896 and the early summer of 1897, newspapers throughout the United States had been reporting on odd stories of airships that were purportedly being seen across the nation. Beginning in California, the sightings continued in the months ahead as the area of sightings slowly expanded eastward into states like Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.

One of the most interesting accounts from the era appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the date of April 16, 1897, which announced that the mysterious airship had been viewed through a telescope by one Dr. Leo Caplan while it passed over Missouri.

“The airship visited St. Louis again Thursday night,” the Post-Dispatch report read. “This time the bright searchlight was not only seen by thousands but the object was observed through a telescope and the outlines of the craft were seen.”

Artist’s rendering of the airship purportedly seen during late 1896 and into the summer of 1897.

Dr. Caplan, who was described in the article as a medical doctor and “a dabbler in astronomy” and frequent stargazer, had been convinced that what he observed was no star.

“I was walking to my home on Washington avenue last night about 7:45,” Caplan explained, “when I saw a bright light almost overhead.” The light appeared to the northwest of where Caplan stood observing.

“But the moment I saw this light,” Caplan explained, “I realized it was something unusual and I hastened home, ran to the roof and brought my telescope to bear on the object. Before taking a sight I noticed the light was swaying from side to side.” Caplan likened this peculiar motion to that of “a searchlight that was being manipulated.”

Most intriguingly, Caplan also said that he was able to observe through his telescope “a long black body behind the light,” which he described as being similar to other reports of a large, cigar-shaped object reported by other observers around the time who had seen the mysterious craft during its mostly nighttime visits. One day after Caplan’s observation, another purported sighting of the strange aerial visitor was logged by an Arkansas constable named John J. Sumpter, who saw the airship with his Deputy Sherriff John McLemore.

Amidst newspaper reports like these that had been occurring in the spring and early summer of 1897, there had been other unusual sightings taking place even further east. Around the same time, Joseph Loven, a resident of the Cold Springs community along Jonas Ridge, North Carolina, first said he observed peculiar lights that appeared at night and could be seen from his home off in the direction of a location now famous for the strange lights said to manifest there: a long, flat ridgeline called Brown Mountain.

Brown Mountain as seen today in Western North Carolina.

The Brown Mountain Lights, as the phenomena reputed to occur near Linville in Western North Carolina has since come to be known, would seem to be quite different from the reports of airships that were afoot during the 1890s. However, is it possible that there might nonetheless be a connection between them?

In 1906, nine years after the American airship affair had died down (and some of the earliest alleged sightings of the Brown Mountain Lights were said to have occurred), author Jules Verne still had airships on his mind. His novel Master of the World, a sequel to his earlier book Robur the Conquerer, was now hitting the shelves, which continued the adventures of the fearful Robur and his penchant for building magnificent flying ships. In Master of the World, Verne described a rather unique location as the base of operations for Robur’s latest operations, as featured in the opening pages of the story.

“The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina,” Verne explains. “There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden.”

“The Great Eyrie,” as depicted in the original illustrations for Jules Verne’s novel “Master of the World”

(public domain).

Verne goes on to paint the Great Eyrie as a strange prominence rising above the surrounding landscape, describing it as “rocky and grim and inaccessible,” noting that “under certain atmospheric conditions [it] has a peculiarly blue and distant effect.” Verne elaborates further, speculating that the summit of the Great Eyrie, which remained impenetrable to even the most experienced climbers, might have been an ancient volcano, “one which had slept through ages, but whose inner fires might yet reawake,” which he likens to Krakatoa, Mont Pelee, and potentially being host to an “eruption such as that of 1902 in Martinique.”

This much might have been evident by the many sightings of smoke, or the “unexplained rumblings” cited by locals which appeared to emanate from the Great Eyrie. This, and the fact that, as Verne recounts, “A glow in the sky had crowned the height at night.”

“And finally,” Verne tells us, “one stormy night pale flames, reflected from the clouds above the summit, cast upon the district below a sinister, warning light.”

Flames above the Great Eyrie, from Verne’s “Master of the World”

(Public Domain).

Soon, newspapers throughout the region would begin to report on the mysterious light show occurring in the skies above The Great Eyrie, and as Verne tells us, “curiosity among those who being in no danger themselves were interested in the disturbance merely as a strange phenomenon of nature,” while others nearer to the mysterious mountain lived in fear of possible forthcoming danger.

“Those more immediately threatened were the citizens of Morganton,” Verne tells us, “and even more the good folk of Pleasant Garden and the hamlets and farms yet closer to the mountain.”

English translations of Vern’s novel wouldn’t make their way onto the shelves of American bookstores until 1911, but by the time they did, people around real-life Morganton, North Carolina, were already familiar with similar strange happenings said to occur in their region.

An example appeared in The Charlotte Daily Observer on the date of September 23, 1913, which provided the following account:

“The mysterious light that is seen just above the horizon almost every night from Rattlesnake Knob, near Cold Spring, on the Morganton road is still baffling all investigators. With punctual regularity the light rises in a southeasterly direction from the point of observation just over the lower slope of Brown Mountain, first about 7:30 p.m. and again at 10 o’clock. It looks much like a toy fire balloon, a distinct ball, with no atmosphere about it. It is much smaller than the full moon, much larger than any star and very red. It rises in the far distance from beyond Brown Mountain, which is about 6 miles from Rattlesnake Knob, and after going up a short distance, wavers and goes out in less than 1 minute. It does not always appear in exactly the same place, but varies what must amount in the distance to several miles. The light is visible at all seasons, so Mr. Anderson Loven, an old and reliable resident testifies There seems to be no doubt that the light rises from some point in the wide, level country between Brown Mountain and the South Mountains, a distance of about 12 miles, though it is possible that it rises at a still greater distance.”

Historical photo depicting lights purported to represent the mysterious lights seen near the vicinity of Brown Mountain, North Carolina.

According to most sources, no written records of mysterious lights appear in the region prior to around 1912, although most newspaper accounts begin appearing in 1913. These state that locals had been troubled by the appearances of the lights for the last “two or three years,” which as Geologist Ed Speer, a researcher who has studied the lights for several years has pointed out, would roughly coincide with the appearance of English translations of Jules Verne’s Master of the World in 1911.

However, some sources such as Joseph Loven, who claimed to have seen the lights as early as 1897 (when mysterious “airships” were frequent appearing, at least in American newspapers) also said he wouldn’t begin to pay attention to the lights until 1910, when others began to bring attention to them like Rev. C. E. Gregory, his neighbor at the time.

Is it indeed possible that there could be any connection between beliefs about the Brown Mountain Lights—appearances of which have been said to persist now for decades—and the mysterious airships of the 1890s? Admittedly, the appearance of “The Great Eyrie” as depicted in art from Verne’s novel bears a striking similarity to Table Rock, a prominent mountain in the Linville Gorge wilderness a short distance from Brown Mountain where reports of the mysterious lights have also been logged over the years.

An enhanced photo that may depict an anomalous light rising over Table Rock in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, taken in 2009 by researcher Bill Fox

(Credit: Bill Fox).

It would be difficult to imagine Jules Verne (who despite his gifted imagination, never strayed far from his home in France) had somehow heard about quaint local traditions in the southern Appalachians regarding ghost lights at the time he wrote of the “strange occurrences… in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina” in Master of the World. This is especially unlikely since newspaper accounts detailing the lights appeared no earlier than 1912, one year after the publication of his novel.

Conversely, the skeptically inclined would argue that stories about the lights, rather than inspiring Verne’s story, had actually been influenced by its publication instead. Then again, if this were true, what can be said of the endurance of reports of the lights now for more than a century? A final possibility would simply be that there are no connections, apart from the coincidental appearances of the lights shortly after the publication of Verne’s book, which borrowed from the lingering interest in prospective airships seen in America in the 1890s (although it should be noted that a similar rash of sightings occurred in Britain in 1909, Verne’s novel was published in France three years before this, and thus couldn’t have been inspired by the sightings of “Scareships” over Europe).

Some of the similarities between these late-19th and early-20th century oddities are certainly difficult to ignore. Ultimately, they could be suggestive of the cultural influence one of the most renowned early science fiction novelists had on the development of a famous folk tradition of “ghost lights” in the American southeast.

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If there was one person on Earth who would have definitive knowledge of extraterrestrials, the leading candidate would be an astronaut who has spent time in space. Second choice might be the head of NASA, who has talked to these astronauts and seen their reports. Third would probably be someone who has read the full classified Pentagon report on UFOs, not just the public summary. There’s one person who fits in all three categories – Bill Nelson, the former astronaut who is currently the new head of NASA and just finished reading the classified Pentagon report. So, what does he have to say about ETs?

“People are hungry to know. And of course, ever since ‘Star Trek,’ you know people are yearning to find out what’s out there in the cosmos. Are we alone? Personally, I don’t think we are. The universe is so big, it’s 13 and a half billion years ago is when the universe started. That’s pretty big.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson

What about the UAPs, Bill. Are these Romulan warships or Klingon battle cruisers? Are they shuttlecrafts from a cloaked mothership? Scouts? What did the classified version of the Pentagon report really say about them?

“The report basically says what we thought. We don’t know the answer to what those Navy pilots saw but they know that they know something. They tracked it and locked their radar on to it. It moved quickly from one location to another.”

In an interview with CNN (watch it here), Nelson unfortunately doesn’t sound the one person on Earth with the experience and the exposure to answer those critical questions. Instead, he verbally agrees with the limited 9-pafe summary released to the public, although he does add some NASA-specific observations about whether it might be an alien adversary.

“We don’t think so [that it is an adversary], but when it comes to universe, remember the universe is so large, we have a program in NASA called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But thus far, we don’t have any receipt communication from something that’s intelligent.”

Not surprisingly, he hopes they’re not owned by a foreign adversary.

“… I talked to the Navy pilots, when we were briefed in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and my feeling is that there is clearly something there. It may not necessarily be an extraterrestrial, but if it is a technology that some of our adversaries have, then we better be concerned.”

He also says the public needs to be patient. NASA scientists are analyzing the data in an attempt to explain them scientifically, and he’s awaiting their report. He also plugs the upcoming launch of the James Webb telescope in November, which will “peer back in time, almost to the beginning and additional information will find more planets.”

Associate NASA Administrator Robert Cabana, Administrator Bill Nelson and former NASA Deputy Director Lori Garver in an early photo front of NASA’s first space-bound Orion capsule.

Sigh. Despite his top position at NASA, his time in space and with other astronauts, his access to classified information … he sounds like he’s still in the mode of his other previous job – U.S. senator from Florida.

Will anyone step forward with additional information on those 143 unexplained UAP sightings by the military, or the UAP sightings by other countries, or the hundreds (or more) of other non-military sightings the government must have in its files? Are the sightings really not ours nor of other countries? How much longer will frustrated pilots continue to report on them with no answers? How much longer before there’s a confrontation? Why hasn’t there been one yet?

We want to believe … we just don’t yet know WHO to believe.

A corner of the UFO phenomenon that has remained rather spectacular and alluring is that of the UFO crash. By far the most famous of these is the July 1947 crash of some sort of flying object at Roswell, New Mexico, which has gone on to spawn countless conspiracy theories and tales of alien bodies and secret bases in the desert testing out alien technology. Roswell can also arguably be said to lay claim to being the incident that really launched the UFO craze into the public consciousness and put the idea of sinister government UFO research on the map, the name Roswell being nearly synonymous with any purported UFO crash thereafter and a name known by people who don’t even follow the field. The Roswell incident has become by far the most famous UFO crash, becoming a pop cultural icon in the process, and is largely thought to mark the beginning of serious mainstream consideration of mysterious craft coming down from the sky to smash into the earth. Yet, Roswell is not, as many may believe, the first, and there have been supposed mysterious crashes of UFOs and even alien bodies found that predate it by some margin.

One of the earliest UFO crash stories in America happened even before there was even a Roswell at all. In 1884 there was a very bizarre incident that allegedly happened at the tiny town of Max, Nebraska. The town was just a dusty, nondescript speck on the map, with only 914 living there at the time, a place where not much ever happened at all, but on June 6, 1884 all of that would change. On this day a rancher named John W. Ellis and a group of other cowboys were rounding up a herd of cattle when they heard a “terrific whirring noise over their heads” and turned to see “a blazing body falling like a shot to Earth.” Whatever it was hit nearby beyond an embankment, and when they went to investigate they found a strange metallic object embedded in the earth, which had left in its wake a deep gash in the ground. One of the frightened herdsmen, a man named Alf Williamson, was purportedly burned when he drew to close to the object. There was apparently a lot of debris from the mysterious craft lying about as well, and one report in the Nebraska State Journal would say of this:

One piece that looked like the blade of a propeller screw, of a metal of an appearance like brass, about 16 inches wide, three inches thick and three-and-a-half feet long, was picked up by a spade. It would not weigh more than five pounds, but appeared as strong and compact as any known metal. A fragment of a wheel with a milled rim, apparently having had a diameter of seven or eight feet, was also picked up. It seemed to be of the same material and had the same remarkable lightness.

It is a very compelling report, but it happened so long ago and was so little covered in the news at the time that it is impossible to ascertain how real any of the report is or what could have happened to the supposed fragments of the craft. What happened to this craft after that? Are there still pieces of this thing out there somewhere? Who knows? Another very early account of a supposed UFO crash that happened just a few years later even allegedly featured a dead alien pilot. In April of 1897, the small town of Aurora, Texas, was rocked by a rather spectacular event. It was reported that a large, slow-moving aircraft like nothing anyone had ever seen came down from the sky to go smashing into a windmill to send debris scattering everywhere, as well as a dead humanoid creature the townsfolk called the “Martian pilot.” An article in the Dallas Morning News would say of the incident:

Aurora Cemetery “About 6 o’clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

The body of the alien was then supposedly given a proper burial at the local cemetery, and it has all become a fixture of local lore, as well as almost legendary in the UFO field. Various people have tried to dig up more information on this, even talking to supposed living relatives of the original witnesses and scouring the cemetery with metal detectors, but the body supposed body has never been found. In 1973, a group called the International UFO Bureau claimed to have located the site of the alien’s grave, but they were denied the proper permits to have it exhumed, leaving it a mystery as to just who or what is buried there. A North Texas State University professor also allegedly unearthed some fragments at the site of where the windmill once stood, which “consisted primarily of iron which did not seem to exhibit magnetic properties,” but it is unknown what happened to these or what they actually were.

One account in later years from 1920 is an account related by a man named Clark Linch, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. On June 3, 1920, Linch took a break from working on his father’s farm in order to do some fishing at the nearby river. It was 10 AM on a pleasant day, and he planned to go out fishing for just a few hours and then come back to work. As he sat out at the riverside waiting for a fish to bite, he allegedly saw “an egg-shaped object the size of a cream can” come down to smash into the ground about 15 feet away on the bank, where it sat for around 15 minutes before taking off again. He would say of his rather odd encounter:

I wasn’t in any hurry to jump up and run over to it, and I’m glad I didn’t. It might have killed me. Just when I thought about going over to take a closer look at it, it took off without any sound and without turning around.  The grass where it hit was pressed down. I didn’t know what to believe about it at the time, and I still don’t. I’ve concluded that it wasn’t anything from Earth. It was so small; it couldn’t have been occupied by intelligent life as we know it.

He would claim that the object flew off at very slow speeds, with a strange wobbling motion, making him think the thing had crashed and been damaged somehow. When Linch examined where the object had been, he found merely an area of pressed down grass, but no scorch marks or other damage. At the time he kept his strange experience to himself, and it would not be until 1955 that he would tell anyone about what had happened, explaining “You didn’t talk about flying saucers in 1920.” Despite decades having passed, he still vividly remembered the incident, and knew the date because it was his birthday and the year he got married. What did he see out there at that riverside?

Even more spectacular is another report of a UFO crash complete with alien bodies and a government cover-up that predates Roswell by 6 years. The account comes from the book UFO Crash / Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, by UFO researcher Leo Stringfield. He claimed that he had received a letter from a woman named Charlette Mann, who had a very strange story to tell. She claimed that in 1984 her grandmother on her deathbed had told her about an incident experienced by her grandfather, a Reverend William Huffman, who had told her of having been involved with being called to bless alien bodies in the wake of a UFO crash outside of Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the spring of 1941. Huffman told her that he had been brought to the crash site thinking he was going to an airplane crash and that he would be saying last rights to human victims, but as soon as he arrived, it was immediately clear that this was no normal aircraft and these were not human victims, but rather a spaceship and several small, hairless beings. Charlette would explain of what had happened to her grandfather:

Upon arrival it was a very different situation. It was not a conventional aircraft, as we know it. He described it as a saucer that was metallic in color, no seams, did not look like anything he had seen. It had been broken open in one portion, and so he could walk up and see that. In looking in he saw a small metal chair, gauges and dials and things he had never seen. However, what impressed him most was around the inside there were inscriptions and writings, which he said he did not recognize, but were similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There were 3 entities, or non-human people, lying on the ground. Two were just outside the saucer, and a third one was further out. His understanding was that perhaps that third one was not dead on impact.

It was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin, but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil. He could see no hair on their bodies and they had no ears. They were small framed like a child, about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms. Their faces had large, oval-shaped eyes, no noses, just holes and no lips, just small slits for mouths. There had been mention of a ball of fire, yet there was fire around the crash site, but none of the entities had been burned and so father did pray over them, giving them last rites. There were many people there, fire people, photographers, and so they lifted up one, and two men on either side stood him up and they stretched his arms out, they had him up under the armpits and out here.

When Huffman had finished his blessings and his duty, he was then told in no uncertain terms to say nothing of what he had seen there, but he had eventually told his wife. Charlette also claimed that her grandfather had secretly kept a picture from the scene of the crash, which allegedly showed one of the dead alien bodies being held up by two military men. She had been shown this picture by her father, who had gotten it from her grandfather, and indeed she claimed that this was the reason she had pushed her grandmother to tell her the truth of what had happened that day. Charlette would say of the creature in the mysterious photograph:

As I recall from the picture I saw, he was about 4 feet tall, appeared to have no bone structure, soft looking. He had a suit on, or we assume it was a suit, it could have been his skin, and what looked like crinkled, soft aluminum foil. I recall it had very long hands, very long fingers, and I think there were three but I cannot swear to that.

It is unclear what happened to this picture, or whether it ever even existed or not, and indeed the whole account is a bit murky and difficult to get to the facts. Several people related to Charlette, as well as the living brother of the Cape Girardeau County sheriff in 1941, Clarance R. Schade have corroborated these events, and Charlette Mann has been called a very sincere and trustworthy person by those who have interviewed her since, but UFO researchers who have visited the area and dug for more information have failed to uncover much more information on the case. It is largely known from Stringfield’s book and some interviews with Charlette herself, and without further evidence it is hard to say just what exactly happened out there in the spring of 1941.

What can we say about such reports? With no real evidence there is not way to know how real they were, or whether they were merely hoaxes and urban legends and lore. One thing we can say is that they show that the notion of alien spacecraft coming down to crash into the earth did not begin with Roswell, and that this sort of report has been going on for some time. Whether it is aliens, tall tales, or some explainable phenomena, such reports certainly capture the attention, and serve as strange historical oddities that have remained elusive to our understanding.

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