1750–1799 CE — The Enlightenment's greatest scientific minds formally documented the phenomenon in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The first attempted scientific image of a UAP was made at Lausanne in 1762. Four Royal Society Fellows simultaneously observed a craft at Windsor Castle in 1783. A Swedish youth spent four days in an underground realm of little people documented in a parish book. Owen Parfitt vanished from his folded greatcoat. The phenomenon was everywhere — and it was being documented by the era's most credible witnesses.
1750 – 1799: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The second half of the 18th century CE was the age of the American and French Revolutions, the height of the Enlightenment, and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It was also the period in which the phenomenon entered the formal scientific record with unprecedented consistency — submitted to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, documented by observatories across Europe, and logged by astronomers, naturalists, naval officers, and clergy with a precision that makes this fifty-year window the most institutionally documented pre-modern UAP period in the archive. The 1762 Lausanne fusiform object — observed daily for nearly a month through telescope by Swiss astronomer Monsieur de Rostan, traced with a camera obscura, and submitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris — was the first attempted scientific image of a UAP in history. The 1783 Windsor Castle cylindrical object was witnessed by four Fellows of the Royal Society simultaneously and submitted in precise observational detail to the Philosophical Transactions. The phenomenon was not hiding from the Enlightenment. It was being documented by it.
The 1750–1799 archive is also the richest fifty-year window for entity and missing time encounters in the pre-modern record. A Swedish youth named Jacob Jacobsson spent four days in an underground realm with little people — returning with no memory of the time passage, no hunger, no thirst, and an uneasy feeling that persisted — recorded in a parish book by a Reverend who personally took his statement. A paralyzed English man named Owen Parfitt vanished from his folded greatcoat while his sister walked to retrieve him, leaving no trace despite investigations as late as 1933. Three red-uniformed dwarf beings danced in a Welsh field and disappeared before adult witnesses could return. A man in Kazan, Russia was taken to a flying cauldron and believed he visited another world. The archive closes with George Washington’s own Valley Forge vision — a luminous female entity delivering prophecy about the fate of the American Republic — documented by the soldier who heard Washington describe it. Whatever was operating over the late 18th century world was present at the birth of the modern democratic era, and it was being watched by its most careful observers.
Date: 1751
Location: Agram, Croatia
Summary: An iron meteorite crashes . The vapory cloud left by an aerial explosion was visible for an hour before it entirely dissipated. After the detonation took place, two masses of iron fell in the shape of chains welded together.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: 1752
Location: Kazan, Russia
Summary: A man named ” Yashka” reportedly met a stranger dressed in white who took him to a flying cauldron. He believed he visited another world, and then returned to the Earth.
Source: Vadim Chernobrov, Synodic Archives (Kazan University, 1909), No. 635:135, V.XXV.
Date: April 15, 1752
Location: Stavanger, Norway
Summary: “An octagonal luminosity in the sky emitted fireballs from its angles.”
Source: Alexis Perey, Surles tremblements de terre de la peninsule scandinave (Paris, 1842), 17. Perey draws from La Gazette, June 10th, 1752.
Date: June 1, 1752
Location: Augermannland, Sweden
Time: Between 4 and 5 A.M.
Summary: Luminous spheres were seen coming out of a bright cylinder.
Source: Robert Mallet and John William Mallet, The Earthquake Catalogue of the British Association (British Association for the Advancement of Science, London: Taylor & Francis, 1858).
Date: 1753
Location: Catania, Sicily, Italy
Time: Not recorded
Summary: The disappearance of Alberto Gordoni in Catania — a documented unexplained disappearance case connected to anomalous aerial activity. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: December 8 1753 11:40
Location: Fleet England
Summary: A flying disc was observed. One silver disc was observed.
Source: Inforespace
Date: August 15, 1754
Location: Amsterdam and Chiswick, England
Summary: After sunset a strange sphere, with an apparent diameter equal to that of the full moon, was observed shooting blinding bright beams, and descending close to ground level.
Source: The Gentleman’s Magazine 25 (1755): 461-462.
Date: August 15 1755 21:00
Location: Chiswick, England
Summary: One ball was observed.
Source: Inforespace
Date: January 2 1756
Location: Torino, Italy
Summary: Skyquake, blue object shoots flames. Seen for 20 minutes in passing
Source: Inforespace
Date: March 10 1756
Location: Avignon, Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur, France
Summary: Two objects were observed.
Source: Delaire, J. Bernard UFO Register Volume 4 (1973) Data Research, Oxford, 1973
Date: Summer 1757
Location: Cae Caled Wales
Summary: Several children playing in a field encountered a group of dwarf like beings that appeared to be dancing with great briskness. The beings were all clothed in red military like uniforms. They also wore red handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads. The children fled the field in order to obtain adult witnesses but upon returning the short beings were already gone.
Source: Randall Jones Pugh & F W Holliday The Dyfed Enigma
Date: 1758
Location: England: From Cambridge to Ross-shire
Summary: A dazzling light as bright as day seen over Britain Velocity was an estimated 30 mps; height over Cambridge 95 miles; over Inverness 30 miles. It seemed to descend obliquely towards the earth, and then ‘rose again with renewed splendor’.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: December 29, 1758
Location: Colchester, Essex, England
Time: 8.00 P.M.
Summary: At 8.00 P.M., an object described by contemporary eyewitnesses as looking like a huge football seemed to descend from the sky. It then “vanished like a squib without a report.”
Source: London Magazine 27 (1758): 685.
Date: February 24, 1759
Location: Liskeard, England, UK
Summary: An object was observed. Gravity effects were noted. One object was observed by one male witness in a yard for over 15 minutes (Thompson)
Source: FSR
Date: May 20, 1759
Location: unknown location
Summary: Astronomer Andreas Mayer reported an observation of a planetoid object seemingly orbiting Venus.
Source: Mayer’s observation first appeared as a very brief footnote in his book, Observationes veneris gryphiswaldenses (1762), 16-17. The full report was first published by Johann-Heinrich Lambert in 1776 in Astronomisches Jahrbuch oder Ephemeriden fur das Jahr 1778 (Berlin, 1776), 186.
Date: September 16, 1759
Location: Lonmora, Sweden
Summary: The following handwritten text is recorded in the parish book of Ramsberg, Sweden: 187 “In the evening of 16 September 1759, the crofter Jacob Jacobsson ‘s eldest son Jacob, 22 years old, had crossed the lake, Vastra Kiolsjon, to the crofter Anders Nilson at Lonmora, to deliver the food packet for him and his father for the following day’s work in the Woods. Coming back across the lake, as he pulled the boat upon the shore, something strange happened to him. “A large and broad road appeared before him. He followed it and soon reached a large red mansion, in his own words, ‘with grander buildings than Gamlebo.’ Soon he found himself seated on a bench by the door in a big chamber. He saw a chubby little man with a red cap on his head, sitting at the end of a table, and crowds of little people running back and forth. They were in every way like ordinary men, but of short stature. A bit taller than the rest was a fine-looking maiden, who offered him food and drink. He said, ‘No, thank you.’ The Little people asked him whether he wanted to stay with them, and he answered, ‘God, help me back home to my father and mother!’ Then the man with the red cap said, ‘Throw him out, he has such an ugly mouth!’ In the next instant he was back by the lake shore, and from there he returned home. His parents greeted him with pleasure. They had been very worried; together with the neighbors they had searched the woods and the lake for him. Four days and nights had passed without a trace of him. When he finally came back on Thursday evening he had not eaten or slept for four days, yet he had no desire for food or drink. He thought he had been away only for a little while. The following day everything was normal except for an uneasy feeling in his body and mind. “Jacob made this statement to me in the presence of his parents on St. Michael’s Day 1759. This boy has quite a simple, pious, meek and gentle character. He is praised by everyone; all his life he has been known to take pleasure in reading and contemplating God’s words whenever he has some spare time. “
Source: Ramsberg sockens kyrkobok, El: 1, 1786-1774, handwritten entry by Reverend Vigelius. The book is kept at Landsarkivet, Uppsala, Sweden. Translation by Clas Svahm
Date: 1760
Location: Glaisdale, Yorkshire, England
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A goblin-like creature was encountered at Glaisdale, Yorkshire. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: May 7, 1761
Location: France
Summary: Prominent French astronomer J. L. Lagrange observed an object that seemed to be in orbit around Venus. He announced that its orbital plane was perpendicular to the ecliptic. Venus was then an evening “star” at 207° heliocentric longitude and 34° elongation.
Source: “The Problematical Satellite of Venus,” The Observatory 7 (1884): 222-226.
Date: December 26, 1761
Location: Weyloe, Denmark
Summary: “The following letter was received from Weyloe, in the diocese of Copenhagen: “On the 26th of December last, about ten at night, there arose a great storm. I did not go to bed, and about four minutes past two in the morning, I observed a sudden light across my windows, which I took for lightning: the storm at this time increased not a little. I kept my eye fixed at my window; and at four o’clock I perceived a ray of light which seemed to come in a horizontal direction from the moon, to appearance about a toise and half (nine feet) in length, and about the thickness of a man’s arm. Rays darted from it on each side. “Running into my garden, I saw a ball of fire, about the size of a common ball, running gently from south to north. At first the ball was of a pale colour, like the sun covered with clouds, and threw out many rays. It grew more and more red, and smaller, and in two minutes disappeared without noise or smoke. My astonishment was the greater, as the tempest ceased soon after, though it had been accompanied with such violent blasts of wind, that many imagined they felt the shock of an earthquake. I have spoken to a dozen of people, who also saw it. Of all the phaenomena I have seen in Norway, I remember none equal to this, nor attended with like circumstances.” Given the weather environment, one could hypothesize globular lightning, but the 189 description of multiple beams is highly unusual.
Source: The annual register, or a view of the history, politics, and literature, for the year 1761, 5th Ed (London: J. Dodsley, 1786), 67.
Date: 1762
Location: Sole near Basel, France
Summary: A friend of Monsieur de Rostan, living at Sole near Basel, also observed the spindle-shaped object against the sun, but it seemed to present more of an edge and was not quite as broad. Oddly enough, the UFO was not visible to a third astronomer, a Monsieur Messier who studied the sun, during the same time, from Paris — an indication that the object was not a sunspot, since it was visible only from certain angles.
Source: Harold T. Wilkins, “Flying Saucers on the Attack,” pp. 211-212
Date: 1762
Location: Noirmoutier Island, France
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A mermaid was found on Noirmoutier Island. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: August 9, 1762
Location: Lausanne, Switzerland
Summary: Monsieur de Rostan, an amateur astronomer and member of the Medico-Physical Society of Basel, Switzerland. August 9, 1762, in Lausanne, Switzerland, observed by a telescope fusiform object crossing and eclipsing the sun. Monsieur de Rostan was able to observe this object almost daily for nearly a month. He also managed to trace its outline with a camera obscure and sent the image to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. Unfortunately, his image – probably the first ever obtained of a UFO – no longer exists. A friend of Monsieur de Rostan, living in Basel next single, has also been observed fusiform against the sun, but it seemed to make more of an edge and was not as wide. Oddly enough, the UFO was not obvious to a third astronomer of Paris – nevertheless an indication that the object was not a sunspot, since it was visible only from certain angles.
Source: Harold T. Wilkins, “Flying Saucers on the Attack,” p. 211-212
Date: Dec. 12, 1762
Location: Lulworth, Dorsetshire, England
Time: 2100
Summary: Reported in a London paper in 1762: a bright light in the form of a straight line eight moon diameters long, one diameter wide. Described as “a sudden & radiant light which overspread the earth and sea, equal to the splendour of the noonday summer sun; looking directly perpendicular over us, we saw an appearance refulgent as the sun itself, in form straight as a line, about eight times the diameter of the full moon in length, in breadth not an eighth part of its length; the duration about a minute. Afterwards it altered its position, and changed into a serpentine form to terminate in smoke.”
Duration: more than 1 min
Source: NUFORC
Date: June, 1763
Location: Shepton Mallet, England
Time: 7 p.m
Summary: Owen Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister’s home, as was often his habit on warm evenings. Virtually unable to move, the 60-year-old man sat quietly is his nightshirt upon his folded greatcoat. Across the road was a farm where workers were finishing their workday by poking the hay. At about 7 p.m., Parfitt’s sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone. Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no trace or clues to Parfitt’s fate were ever uncovered.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: June 13, 1765
Location: Mount Prospect, Innishannon, Ireland
Summary: “Last Monday Evening, between eight and nine o’Clock, an extraordinary Phaenomenon was seen from Mount-Prospect, near Innishannon, by several Gentlemen and Ladies. A most superb Throne appeared in the Northern Sphere, enclosed by a broad Circle of a Gold Colour, with a Lion in the front Protecting the Throne, which appearance lasted about half an Hour, and went off by slow Degrees. The Evening was very Serene, and the Sky all around appeared quite black. We are assured of the Truth of this Relation by People of Veracity.”
Source: The Public Register, or Freemans Journal (Dublin, Ireland) 15 June, 1765.
Date: 1766
Location: Sweden
Summary: In Sweden three objects “like the moon” appeared in the sky and stayed for four days, then vanished never to be seen again. In another incident that same year, a luminous globe appeared at night and projected beams of light out of it. These seemingly minor incidents are quite remarkable because there was nothing in the skies in 1766 that could project a beam of light, except sunbeams coming through clouds.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: September 8, 1767
Location: Perthshire, Scotland
Summary: “We hear from Perthshire, that an uncommon phenomenon was observed on the water of Isla, near Cupor Angus, preceded by a thick dark smoke, which soon dispelled, and discovered a large luminous body, like a house on fire, but presently after took a form something pyramidal, and rolled forwards with impetuosity till it came to the water of Erick, up which river it took its direction, with great rapidity, and disappeared a little above Blairgowrie. The effects were as extraordinary as the appearance. “In its passage, it carried a large cart many yards over a field of grass; a man riding along the high road was carried from his horse, and so stunned with the fall, as to remain senseless a considerable time. It destroyed one half of a house, and left the other behind, undermined and destroyed an arch of the new bridge building at Blairgowrie, immediately after which it disappeared.”
Source: Letter from Edinburgh dated 8 Sept. 1767, in The Annual Register, 1767.
Date: January 4, 1768
Location: Venus
Summary: Astronomer Christian Horrebow reported an observation of “a small light, that was not a star” which appeared to be in orbit around Venus. This object, named “Neith” by M. Hozeau of Brussels observatory, was never identified with certainty and was certainly not a natural satellite.
Source: H. C. F. C. Schjellerup, “On some hitherto unknown observations of a supposed satellite of Venus,” Copernicus 2 (Dublin, 1882): 164-168.
Date: 1768
Location: Near Leipzig, Germany
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A close encounter was reported near Leipzig, Germany. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1769
Location: Matemblewo, Poland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A Virgin Mary apparition — luminous female entity encounter — was reported at Matemblewo, Poland. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1770
Location: Staffordshire, England
Time: Not recorded
Summary: An underground encounter was reported in Staffordshire, England — a subterranean entity contact case. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: December 8, 1773
Location: Dorset, England
Summary: “Something in the sky which appeared in the north, but vanished from my sight, as it was intercepted by trees, from my vision. I was standing in a valley. The weather was warm, the sun shone brightly. On a sudden it re-appeared, darting in and out of my sight with an amazing coruscation. The colour of this phenomenon was like burnished, or new washed silver. It shot with speed like a star falling in the night. But it has a body much larger and a train longer than any shooting star I have seen… Next day, Mr. Edgecombe informed me that he and another gentleman had seen this strange phenomenon at the same time as I had. It was about 15 miles from where I saw it, and steering a course from E. to N.”
The witness of this event was a Mr. Cracker of Fleet, a small township in Dorset, England. Mr. Cracker said that he saw this “flying saucer” in broad daylight on December 8, 1773.
Source: “Fate”, April 1951, p. 24
Date: May 5, 1775
Location: Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire, England
Time: 8:30 P.M.
Summary: “At 8:30 P.M. a remarkable phenomenon was observed by a gentleman at Waltham Abbey. “A meteor, resembling a nebulous star, appeared just above the moon, passed eastward, with a slow motion, parallel to the ecliptic, through an arch of about 5 or 6 degrees, and then disappeared. It subtended an angle of 6 or 7 minutes, and was of the same brightness and colour with the moon.”
Source: The Annual Register (London, 1776): 116.
Date: June 7, 1777
Location: Boulogne, Pays-de-la-Loire, France
Summary: Procession of objects. Physiological effects were noted. Many objects were observed.
Source: Fort, Charles Book of the Damned Boni-Liveright, 1919
Date: June 17, 1777
Location: France
Summary: French astronomer Charles Messier saw a number of dark round objects in the sky.
Source: “Observations of the transits of intra-mercurial planets or other bodies across the Sun’s disk,” The Observatory 29 (1879): 136.
Date: Winter 1777–1778
Location: Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
Time: Not recorded
Summary: George Washington reportedly described to Anthony Sherman a visionary encounter with a luminous female entity at Valley Forge during the darkest period of the American Revolutionary War. The entity allegedly showed him three great trials the Republic would face. First documented in The National Tribune in 1859 from Sherman’s account. The authenticity is debated but the account has been in continuous circulation since the Civil War era.
Source: The National Tribune, December 1880; Anthony Sherman account
Date: February 5, 1780
Location: Bussieres, France
Time: 6 P.M.
Summary: About 6 P.M. a flaming “dragon” was seen in the sky for 15 minutes, illuminating everyone below.
Source: “French UFO magazine, Lumieres dans la Nuit 338.
Date: August 18, 1783 
Location: Windsor Castle, England
Time: Evening
Summary: Four Fellows of the Royal Society — Tiberius Cavallo, Thomas Sandby, Paul Sandby, and others — simultaneously observed from the terrace of Windsor Castle a reddish-brown luminous object that expanded into a light blue oval shape, moved northeast, then discharged a stream of light before disappearing. The event was documented in precise detail by Tiberius Cavallo and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society — one of the most credentialed UAP observations in the 18th century record. [Full Report]
Source: Tiberius Cavallo, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1784
Date: August 30 1783
Location: Greenwich England
Summary: Cigar-shaped objects were observed. Nine cigar-shaped objects were observed (Wilkins).
Source: Vallee, Jacques Anatomy of a Phenomenon Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1965
Date: 1786
Location: England
Summary: A bright ball of fire and light lasting 40 minutes was seen in the sky over southern during a hurricane of wind.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: May 5, 1786
Location: Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Summary: On May 5, 1786, a large amount of black eggs fell on Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The eggs hatched the next day. The creatures resembled tadpoles and shed their skin several times.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: September 11, 1787
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Time: 8:30 P.M.
Summary: About 8:30 P.M. people saw a fiery globe larger than the sun in a northerly direction. It proceeded horizontally to the east, about 15 to 20 degrees in elevation. Then it descended to the horizon, rose again higher than before with short waves in its trajectory and finally moved west and was lost to view behind a cloud, where it seemed to explode.
Source: John Winthrop, “An Account of a Meteor Seen in New England, and of a Whirlwind Felt in That Country: In a Letter to the Rev. Tho. Birch, D. D., Secretary to the Royal Society, from Mr. John Winthrop, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge in New England,” Philosophical Transactions 52 (1761-1762): 6-16.
Date: October or November 12, 1788
Location: Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
Time: Night
Summary: Nocturnal lights were observed by a male witness.
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980
Date: 1790
Location: Matemblewo, Poland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: An entity encounter was reported at Matemblewo, Poland — a follow-up to the 1769 Virgin Mary apparition at the same location. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: June 12, 1790
Location: Alençon, France
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sphere exploded at Alençon — one of the most famous pre-modern UAP physical evidence cases in the French record, investigated by local authorities and documented in official records. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1790
Location: Barao de Alfenas, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Summary: An escaped black slave, Joao Antao escaped from a local ranch and hid in a cave in the region. In the cave he encountered a tall man dressed all in white, very elegant and educated. The man identified himself as Saint Thomas and asked the slave to build a shrine in the locale. Antao did what he was told and today the place is the site of the church at Vila de Sao Thome.
Source: Sao Tome das Letras
Date: 1790
Location: Between Denbigh and Wrexham, Wales
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A black beast was seen between Denbigh and Wrexham — a large anomalous creature encounter consistent with the documented pattern of British black beast sightings. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1790
Location: Carlisle, Schoharie County, New York
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A UFO sighting was reported in Schoharie County — one of the earliest documented American colonial-era UAP reports from upstate New York. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1791
Location: Near Gresford, England
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A black beast was encountered near Gresford — part of the documented series of large anomalous creature encounters in the Welsh border region. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1792
Location: Thicket Portage, Manitoba, Canada
Summary: Surveyor notes appearance of “a brilliant light. a meteor of globular form, and it appeared larger than the Moon, which was then very high.”
Source: Colombo, John Robert UFOs over Canada: Personal Accounts of Sightings and Close Encounters Hounslow Press, Willowdale, 1991
Date: 1793
Location: Northumberland England
Summary: A bright oval light was observed in the sky over for around five minutes. At first it appeared the size of Sirius
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: November 27 1793
Location: Floresti, Romania
Summary: Moon flew east to west for 30 minutes across the sky and stopped.
Source: Hobana, Ion UFOs from Behind the Iron Curtain Bantam Y8898, New York, 1975
Date: 1796
Location: Lusace, Germany????
Summary: An object was observed. Metallic traces found. One object was observed.
Source: Delaire, J. Bernard UFO Register Volume 2 (1971) Data Research, Oxford, 1971
Date: March 1796
Location: Don Region Russia
Time: morning
Summary: The inhabitants of a Russian village in the region were surprised to find a large metal ball in one of their fields. It was ten feet in diameter. People from everywhere flocked to see it, and they wondered where it had come from. It could have fallen from the sky, they thought, but there was no crater. Except for a regular pattern of circles etched into it the surface of the ball was as smooth as marble. The village folk tried to move the object but their effort was useless, it would not budge an inch. Then the local drunkard, a man named Pouchkine arrived, he was known as a gambler, even a heretic, and everyone looked down on his ways. But despite his faults, he was known to be very courageous. He was led to the spot. Pouchkine cursed at the object and struck it with his sable several times. Suddenly the crowd around him began to howl with terror; one of the circles on the ball had opened up, revealing a single inhuman eye. Pouchkine sneered and carried on with his blows against the object. He struck it so hard, in fact that the blade snapped off. The peasants fled in fear. Behind them they saw the drunkard and his steed were both becoming transparent and then finally disappear into the air. They could still faintly hear his voice, however, as his angry cursing faded away. Two days passed and nothing was seen or heard of Pouchkine. Then to everyone’s surprise both he and his trusty horse staggered back into the village as if drunk. He seemed calm enough, but he soon “flew into a great rage and began to howl” that he was going to put an end to the unholy globe and set fire to it and the woods and everything around it. Everybody trailed along after him to enjoy the spectacle. But much to Pouchkine’s mortification, the ball was no longer there.
Source: Chris Aubeck, Return to Magonia
Date: 1796
Location: Dresden and Berlin, Germany
Summary: A bright light irregular in form and the size of the moon was seen in the sky above. A large detonation was heard and a dark bituminous substance fell to earth
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: October 12 1796
Location: New Minas, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Summary: A contemporary report states that a fleet of “ships” had been seen in the air in some part of the Bay of Fundy. A frightened girl saw the spectacle and called out and two men that were in the house went out and saw the same sight, being fifteen ships and a man forward of them with his hand stretched out. The “ships” traveled eastward. They were so near that the people saw their sides and ports.
Source: Don Ledger, Maritime UFO Files, quoting Judge Simeon Perkins
Date: March 2 1797
Location: Paris, France
Summary: One object was observed by one witness (Caroche).
Source: Philosophy Magazine
Date: March 8 1797
Location: Caluire, France
Summary: One object, about 5 feet across, was observed.
Source: Philosophy Magazine
Date: March 25 1797
Location: Niort, Poitou-Charentes, France
Summary: Three objects, the size of the moon, were observed
Source: Philosophy Magazine
Date: January 18 1797
Location: Tarbes, Midi-Pyrenees, France
Summary: One daytime object was observed by one experienced male witness (D’Angos)
Source: Philosophy Magazine
Date: Sept. 10, 1798
Location: Alnwick, Northumberland, England
Summary: A particularly graphic case of a shape-changing UFO was reported by a Northumberland schoolteacher, Alexander Campbell, and a friend. According to The Annual Register for 1798 when the object first appeared high up in the south-western sector of the sky it seemed to be no bigger than a star, but as it came closer it “expanded into the form and size of an apothecary’s pestle.” “It was then obscured by a cloud, which was still illuminated behind; when the cloud was dispelled, it reappeared with a direction south and north, with a small long streamer, cutting the pestle a little below the centre, and issuing away to the eastward. It was again obscured, and, on its re-appearance, the streamer and the pestle had formed the appearance of a hammer or a cross; presently after the streamer, which made the shaft to the hammer, or stalk to the cross, assumed two horns to the extreme point, towards the east, resembling a fork. It was then a third time obscured, but when the cloud passed over, it was changed into the shape of two half moons, back to back, having a short thick luminous stream between the two backs; it then vanished totally from their sight. It is observable that every new appearance became brighter and brighter, till it became an exceedingly brilliant object, all the other stars, in comparison, appearing to be only dim specks.” The sighting lasted some five minutes in all.
Source: Inforespace 28, quoting from The Annual Register 83 (London, 1798).
Date: 1798
Location: Near Quang Tri, Vietnam
Time: night
Summary: During a period of persecution of Vietnamese Catholics, these had taken refuge in the deep forest of Lavang. Unexpectedly, one night they were visited by an apparition of a beautiful lady in a long cape, holding a child in her arms, with two angels at her sides. The people recognized the Lady as Our Blessed Mother. She comforted them and told them to boil the leaves from the surrounding trees to use as medicine. She also told them that from that day on, all those who came to this place to pray, would get their prayers heard and answered. All those who were present witnessed this miracle. After this first apparition the Blessed Mother continued to appear to the people in this same place many times throughout the period of nearly one hundred years of religious persecution.
Source: Our Lady of Lavang, Vietnam
Date: July 1799
Location: Bruges, Belgium
Summary: An unusual “meteor” crosses the sky towards the south and returns north, then makes a 45-degree turn to the northwest, proving it was no natural object, and certainly not a meteor.
Source: T. Forster, “A Memoir on Meteors of Various Sorts,” Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, July-Dec. 1847.
Date: Sept. 19, 1799
Location: Siberia, exact location not known Russia
Time: 20:30
Summary: “On Sept. 19 [1799], all England saw, at 8:30 p.m., a beautiful ball blazing with white light, and which passed from N.W. to S.E. It moved rapidly with a gentle tremulous motion, and noiselessly. The light cast by it was very vivid, and few red sparks detached themselves from it… On Nov. 12, something like a large red pillar of fire passed north to south over Hereford, and alarmed people in the Forest of Dean, dome miles away. Flashes of extremely vivid electrical sort preceded its appearance, and at intervals of half an hour, several hours before. This was at 5:45 a.m…. On this night the moon shone with uncommon vividness, when between 5 and 6 a.m., bright lights in the sky became stationary. They then burst with not perceptible report, and passed north leaving behind them beautiful trains of floating fire. Some were pointed, some radiated. Some sparkled and some had large columns…. Nov. 19, at 6 a.m., folk of Huncoates, Lincolnshire, were alarmed by vivid flashes lasting 30 seconds, from a ball of fire passing in the sky.”
Source: Gentleman’s Magazine” Harold T. Wilkins, “Flying Saucers on the Attack,”
Date: September 22 1799
Location: Troston, Cromer, Kent England
Summary: An object was sighted by multiple independent witnesses that had an appearance and aerobatic performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft. One object, the size of the moon, was observed.
Source: Philosophy Magazine
Date: 1799
Location: England
Summary: A “beautiful ball blazing with white light” was seen. It made no sound and red sparks flew from it. — consistent with multiple 1799 English sightings documented in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: November 12 1799
Location: Hereford, England
Summary: A “large red pillar of fire” was seen in the sky going south. It was preceded by “flashes of extremely vivid electrical sort”. Other objects were seen leaving luminous trails
Source: Gentlemen’s Magazine
Date: November 19 1799
Location: Huncoates and Lincolnshire, England
Summary: A ball of fire passed in the sky.
Source: Gentleman’s Magazine
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The Revolutionary Era Sky — From Lausanne’s First UFO Photograph to Windsor Castle’s Royal Society Witnesses
The 1750–1799 CE archive is the most institutionally documented fifty-year period in the pre-modern UAP record — and the period in which the phenomenon enters the formal scientific literature as a recurring subject of serious inquiry. Monsieur de Rostan’s month-long daily observation of a fusiform object eclipsing the sun over Lausanne in 1762, documented with a camera obscura and submitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences, represents the first serious scientific attempt to capture and document a UAP through optical instrumentation. The 1783 Windsor Castle event — four Fellows of the Royal Society simultaneously observing a reddish-brown oval that expanded, moved northeast, and discharged light before disappearing — was published in the Philosophical Transactions with the precision of a scientific paper. The same Venus satellite object named Neith was independently observed by Fontana (1645), Short (1740), Lagrange (1761), and Horrebow (1768) — four credentialed astronomers across 123 years reporting the same unidentified object in the same location. The Enlightenment’s greatest scientific minds were seeing the phenomenon and filing formal reports. Their conclusions were the same as every generation before them: we cannot explain what this is.
The entity encounter record of 1750–1799 is equally remarkable. Jacob Jacobsson’s four-day abduction to an underground realm of little people — recorded in a Swedish parish book by a minister who personally took his statement — is the most institutionally documented missing time case in the pre-modern archive. Owen Parfitt’s vanishing from his folded greatcoat in the presence of family — investigated as late as 1933 — establishes a physical evidence baseline for unexplained disappearances connected to aerial activity. Welsh dwarf beings in red military uniforms dancing in a field. A Russian man taken to a flying cauldron to visit another world. A throne with a lion guardian appearing in the Irish sky for thirty minutes. George Washington’s Valley Forge vision of a luminous female entity at the lowest point of the American Revolutionary War. The 1750–1799 archive documents the phenomenon simultaneously at the highest levels of European scientific society and in the fields, forests, and founding moments of the new American Republic. It was everywhere. It was being documented. And it was still unexplained.
“I was able to observe this object almost daily for nearly a month. I also managed to trace its outline with a camera obscura and sent the image to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris.”
Monsieur de Rostan, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 1762, describing the first attempted scientific image of a UAP in history
