The Saturday Strangeness

Dave Haste
By Dave Haste Last edited 194 months ago
The Saturday Strangeness
Flying saucer

35. London UFOs Part One

When the new millennium dawned, many UFO buffs, researchers and spotters packed up their binoculars and disposed of their files because UFOs weren’t ‘in’ anymore. Sightings had allegedly dissipated and the sceptics were rubbing their hands.

However, whilst no strange craft appeared to be crashing in the deserts of the U.S. or buzzing witnesses in Mexico with any frequency, the millennium still offered much in the way of alleged extraterrestrial visitation, and the capital was no exception. However, let us first look at some important historical data simply to prove that, believe in them or not, unidentified craft have always existed alongside mankind.

Anecdotal evidence from the year 664 suggests a weird green light appeared at Barking and headed over London, observed by some nuns. In 764 many ‘dragons’ were seen over the UK, including London. In 1593 there is brief record of a ‘flying dragon surrounded by flame’ over the city. Meanwhile in 1741 a ‘fireball’ was observed over Kensington by Lord Beauchamp, but measured only eight-inches in diameter. One year later at St. James Park, a rocket-like ship was observed for many minutes by a Fellow Of The Royal Society.

Whether driven by martians or related to the human psyche we’ll never know, but in 1882 astronomer Walter Maunder observed what could well have been one of the most impressive UFO incidents related to the capital.

Whilst peering into the vast abyss of space from Greenwich Observatory, Walter was startled to see a disc-like object, greenish in colour moving at phenomenal speed across the sky, heading in a north-easterly direction. Shortly afterwards in ‘The Observatory’ magazine, the Royal Astronomical Society were asking researchers to write down the most amazing things they’d seen through telescope, to which Maunder responded with an article on the bizarre flying object.

By Neil Arnold

Last Updated 12 January 2008