This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Monde, Paris, France, page 16, October 29, 1954.
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From our special correspondant
JEAN D'HOSPITAL
Rome, October 28.
For one week one has seen a little everywhere these mysterious machines with scintillating colors by day and night, in the clouds or at ground level. They seem to take pleasure particularly in the center of the peninsula. They pullulate between Rimini and Pisa, on Sienna, Perugia, Bologna and Florence.
Testimonys of people in good faith who saw them - sailors who do not daydream, professors who doubt the plurality of the inhabited worlds, middle-class and proletarian with solid nerves - amount per hundreds and are impressive by their agreement and their precision. Well, rather, they amounted per hundreds up to now. Since yesterday they are much more.
A friendly soccer game proceeded Wednesday afternoon at the stadium of Florence in front of an assembly of approximately fifteen thousand witnesses. In the full middle of the game, at 4 p.m. exactly, three people suenly stood up in a platform and, pointing the finger towards the sky, exclaimed: "discs!"
Immediately, row by row, the noses rose. No mistake it was really discs. They passed very high and very quickly while projecting a yellow gleam. The entire stadium remained dumbfounded about it.
The two discs and others still, which were seen by many residents of Florence circulating in the streets of the city, left in their wake trails of threads of coton-like substance, extremely thin.
In Rome the Florentin episode caused some surprise. One interviewed scientists of all obedience there in their pointing out that as phenomenon of collective illusion - if that was all about - it is a record, at least with regard to the stunt-flyings of the supposed Martians. One of them stated to us:
"It is nothing. A million bipeds healthy of bodies and mind, gathered in a restricted space, are not safe from such an illusion.
- However, if you had been in Florence, you, and if, well, you had seen what they saw, would you speak with as much certainty?
Oh! As for myself, answered the man of science, is quite simple: I wisely decided, in cold blood, that if it sometimes happens to me to see that, I would not believe my eyes."
