On the night of Nov. 17, 1896, hundreds of Sacramento residents reported seeing an oblong airship-thing making its way across the sky in the middle of the night, propelled by four guys pedaling bicycles that were hooked to large fans. Some of the residents claimed they heard voices and music coming from the thing.

Although this certainly qualified as an unidentified flying object, it wasn’t exactly a ringer for a flying saucer of the type famously seen by McMinnville residents 50 years later. It sounded a lot more along the lines of something Edgar Rice Burroughs would put in one of his “John Carter of Mars” books — or maybe something Victor Appleton would dream up for a Tom Swift title.... (STATE LINE, 1896) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1807a.oregon-called-bs-on-california-ufo-stories-502.html)