THINK ABOUTIT CRASH REPORT

1891: UFO Crash in North Texas – Newspaper

Front page of Dublin Progress, June 20, 1891

1891 city map section of Dublin, TX showing crash site at W. T. Miller Flour Mill & Cotton Gin in the lower left-hand corner.

1896 city map section of Dublin, TX showing crash site at W. R. Wasson Flour Mill & Cotton Gin in the lower left-hand corner.

Transcription of June 20, 1891, Dublin Progress news article (page 4)

METEORIC EXPLOSION

A Meteor Explodes in the City—An Eye Witness Describes the Scene to a Progress Reporter—Scared.

Quite a little excitement was created last Saturday night by the bursting of what is supposed by those who were present to have been a meteor, near Wasson & Miller’s gin. Quite a number witnessed the explosion and nearly everyone in that portion of the city heard the report emanating [sic] therefrom, which is said to have sounded somewhat like the report of a bomb-shell.

Our informant (who, though a little nervous at times, is a gentleman who usually tells the truth, but did not give us this statement with a view to its publication) says he observed the meteor when it was more than three hundred feet in the air, before bursting, and that it bore a striking resemblance to a bale of cotton suspended in the air after having been saturated in kerosene oil and ignited, except that it created a much brighter light, almost dazzling those who perceived [sic] it.

The gentleman in question seems to have been so badly frightened that it was utterly impossible to obtain an accurate account of the dimensions and general appearance of this rare phenomenon, but we are convinced from his statements that his position at the time must have been very embarrassing and that very little time was spent in scientific investigations.

However, on the following morning he returned to the scene so hastily left the previous night, to find the weeds, grass, bushes, and vegetation of every description for many yards around the scene of the explosion burned to a crisp, also discovering a number of peculiar stones and pieces of metal, all of a leaden color, presenting much the appearance of the lava thrown out by volcanic eruptions. He also picked up some small fragments of manuscript and a scrap, supposed to be part of a newspaper, but the language in both was entirely foreign to him, and, in fact, no one has yet been found who has ever seen such a language before, hence no information could be gained from their examination.

At this juncture your reporter requested that he be shown these wonderful fragments of such a miraculous whole, but the narrator had worked himself up to such a pitch of excitement that it was impossible to get him to grasp the significance of our request, and were compelled to leave him a victim to his own bewildered fancy and to ruminate the seemingly miraculous story he had just related. This was a reportorial [sic] zealot denied the boon of seeing fragments of the most remarkable substance ever known to explode near Wasson & Miller’s gin.

P.S. Since the above was put in type we learn that our reporter was given the above information by a contributor to the Dublin Telephone, but the information came too late to prevent its insertion in this paper.