Halley’s Comet, Aliens Filled The Sky

On this date in 1910, Halley’s Comet dropped a 500-pound meteorite on East Texas. Some folks in Delta County panicked, thinking the streaking object surely was an alien craft from outer space. It wasn’t.

Thankfully, most East Texans in May 1910 were well aware Halley’s Comet was on its way.

Besides, they remembered the ruckus of 1897 when a railroad employee swore he saw a cigar-shaped “airship” sitting outside Hawkins near the Wood-Upshur county line.

Sightings

In April 1897, other Texans claimed to have seen the unusual craft flying over their homes. Sightings were reported in Marshall, Atlanta, Greenville and Deadwood (Panola County) as well as several North Texas counties. Remember, this is more than six years before the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

But it was Joseph E. Scully, a Texas and Pacific freight conductor, who seemed to have gotten the best look at the alleged aircraft in 1897 during a run through East Texas.

“Well, we left Big Sandy at 2:10 p.m. It was close onto 3 o’clock when we reached Hawkins,” Scully told a Texas newspaper reporter on April 17. “We were making good time and all at once, in the clearing I saw this ship on the ground, with its bow toward the track.”

Scully said the craft, nestled in a pine grove some 100 yards from the track, had “wings” and was being worked on by a “conductor” who “was tall and spare and looked like a scientist or an inventor. He had that tired, far-away expression … and he was plugging away for dear life on necessary repairs.”

Scully went on to voice his theory that the “airship man has his plans well arranged. He is skipping about the United States creating intense excitement … The airship is the greatest invention of the age, or my name isn’t J.E. Scully.”

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