Airship Sighting in Victoria BC

Airship Sighting In Victoria, BC (39) Victoria, B.C. semi-weekly colonist. 22 July 1897. Loren E. Gross: Charles Fort, the Fortean Society, & Unidentified Flying Objects. p. 17. *UFOBC NOTE:** On the 16th of May, 1896, the Swedish Government informed Canada that they would be sending a balloon from Sweden heading to the North Pole in the early summer of 1896. This information was requested to be widely disseminated across Canada so that any sightings could be reported back to Sweden and any assistance could be given to the explorers if needed. However, due to poor weather, the departure was delayed until the following year. Eventually the balloon set sale on July 11, 1897, but crashed on the pack ice after only 2 days (nowhere near Canada). Strangely enough, many sightings that were assumed to be this balloon were reported in Canada and the USA in 1896 and early 1987 (including this one).
Almost exactly a year later, in July, 1897, after UFO reports in the United States had died out, something strange returned to haunt Canadian skies. Newspapers in the region with which we are now concerned, British Columbia, had paid almost no attention to the "airship excitement" that had taken place south of the border that summer and the previous autumn. About the first of July two men employed at the Victoria Electric Light Company saw a luminous body rising slowly in the eastern sky early in the morning.
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