Three documented cases from the 1901 archive rendered in period-accurate early 1900s silver gelatin photographic style: a ten-year-old boy's CE-III in Bournebrook, England (mid-1901); the photographed three-cigar formation over Silver City, New Mexico (March 7, 1901 — photograph subsequently lost); and three witnesses observing a disc in a Missouri forest at night (1901).
1901: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1901 opened the twentieth century four years before Einstein published special relativity and two years before the first powered flight — and the anomalous record continued without acknowledging either milestone. In Bournemouth, England, in the middle of January, a witness in a garden observed a craft and its occupants at close range at eight in the evening. Four months later, in the same town at two in the afternoon, a ten-year-old boy observed a craft approximately five feet across and its humanoid occupants in a yard. In New Haven, Missouri, three witnesses including two experienced observers heard a noise and observed a flying disc in a forest at night. These are not the sightings of people who read about flying saucers in pulp magazines — there were no flying saucers in 1901, no magazines, no cultural template to borrow from. The Great Airship Wave had ended four years earlier. Whatever these witnesses saw, they had no framework for it except what was directly in front of them.
The most historically significant entry in the 1901 archive is the Silver City, New Mexico photograph of March 7 — a newspaper account of a flying machine photographed over the town, the photograph described as showing three cigar-shaped objects lashed together, one hanging below the other two. The photograph was subsequently lost. This places 1901 in the company of the 1883 Zacatecas Observatory plates and the 1870 Mount Washington photograph as pre-aviation documented photographic evidence of anomalous aerial objects — evidence that has not survived to be analyzed but was contemporaneously documented in the press. The year 1901 is thin in this archive not because little happened but because most of what happened was not yet being systematically collected. What was collected is here.
Date: 1901
Location: New Haven, Missouri
Time: Night
Summary: A flying disc was observed. One disc was observed by three witnesses, two of them an experienced observers, in a forest (Welter). A noise was heard
Source: Rogerson, Peter World-Wide Catalog of Type 1 Reports
Date: mid-January 1901
Location: Bournebrook, UK
Time: 20:00
Summary: Close encounter with a an unidentified craft and its occupants. An unidentified object at close range and its occupants were observed by one witness in a garden.
Source: Webb, David HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports
Date: January–February 1901
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado / New York (Wardenclyffe)
Time: Various
Summary: Inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, following experiments with his wireless transmission equipment at Colorado Springs in 1899–1900, publicly claims in Collier’s Weekly (February 9, 1901) that he received what he believes were intelligent signals from another world — specifically from Mars — through his experimental equipment. Tesla writes: “The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.” He describes the signals as regular, numerical in character, and unlike any known atmospheric or terrestrial interference he had encountered. He does not retract the claim. The archive records this not as a confirmed contact event but as a documented anomalous signal claim by one of the most technically credentialed electrical experimenters of the era — consistent with the archive’s treatment of François Arago (1820), Henry Harrison (1879), and José Bonilla (1883) as credentialed institutional witnesses whose anomalous observations deserve a place in the record.
Source: Tesla, Nikola, Collier’s Weekly, February 9, 1901; Red Cross Magazine, December 1919 (Tesla’s retrospective account of the Colorado Springs signals)
Date: March 7 1901
Location: Silver City, New Mexico
Time: 13:00
Summary: Newspaper reports flying machine photographed, picture “has appearance of three cigar-shaped objects which seemed to be lashed together, the one hanging below the other 2.” Photo lost. Afternoon- newspaper accounts report a flying machine was photographed in Silver City, New Mexico . The photograph “has the appearance of three cigar-shaped objects, which seemed to be lashed together, the one hanging below the other two.” Unfortunately, the photograph was later lost.
Source: Corliss, William R.
Date: Mid- 1901
Location: Bournebrook, UK
Time: 14:00
Summary: A ten-year-old boy observes an object approximately five feet across resting in a yard — described as resembling a box with a turret. A door opens and two small figures emerge, dressed in military-style uniforms and wearing caps with wires protruding from them. The figures wave the boy away with a deliberate gesture. They then re-enter through the door, the door closes, and the object departs in a flash of light. No sound recorded during departure. The boy did not report the encounter until many decades later.
Source: FSR; HowStuffWorks, UFO Sightings Before Roswell; HUMCAT pre-Roswell encounter records
Date: September 7 1901
Location: Herbignac, Pays-de-la-Loire, France
Time: 19:30
Summary: A hovering object was observed. One object was observed by two witnesses for over one minute.
Source: Vallee, Jacques Computerized Catalog
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Opening the Century: CE-IIIs in Bournebrook, a Lost Photograph in New Mexico, and the Disc Over Missouri, 1901
The six documented entries for 1901 are a reminder that the archive’s coverage of the early 20th century is incomplete rather than sparse — the collection infrastructure that would later produce dense annual records did not yet exist in 1901, and a significant portion of what occurred was reported in local newspapers, verbal accounts, and personal diaries that have not survived or been systematically collected. What has survived points consistently to the pattern the archive has been tracking across the preceding centuries: close-range craft-and-occupant observations, aerial objects of defined morphology, and physical photographic evidence that was documented contemporaneously and subsequently lost. The Bournebrook cases are among the earliest documented CE-IIIs of the 20th century. The Silver City photograph is among the first documented cases of photographic evidence described in the press and subsequently irretrievably lost — a pattern that will recur throughout the century.
The two Bournebrook cases — separated by several months but occurring in the same town — constitute an early cluster: a January evening CE-III with occupants, and a mid-year daytime observation of a five-foot craft with humanoid occupants by a ten-year-old boy. The boy’s age is worth noting because it represents a witness type with no motive to fabricate in a cultural environment where the concept of a flying saucer did not yet exist. In 1901, reporting an unidentified craft with humanoid occupants invited no celebrity, no book deals, no conference appearances. It invited only ridicule or indifference. The HUMCAT catalog, which documents the January case, is one of the most rigorous pre-war CE-III data collections in the archive. The FSR source for the mid-year case is equally reliable. The archive treats both as documented, and leaves the questions they raise in the hands of the record.
“The photograph has the appearance of three cigar-shaped objects, which seemed to be lashed together, the one hanging below the other two.”
Newspaper account of the Silver City, New Mexico flying machine photograph, March 7, 1901, as documented by William R. Corliss
Date:
Location:
Time:
Summary:
Source:
