The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Provençal, of Marseilles, France, on August 27, 1954.
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[us]sual, this is what allowed me to fully see the phenomenon.
"The fireball, actually quite low, stood, for me, above Saint-Savournin, east-west direction approximately; descending course, little pronounced arc."
Miss Josette Testa, 49, boulevard Boisson, La Blancarde, writes: "I can assure you that Sunday evening at about 7:55 p.m., I was at the corner of Avenue Foch and Boulevard Boisson when I saw passing in the sky, at an extraordinary pace a fireball leaving a trail. It did not seem to be very high." Our correspondent joined to this observation a rough sketch outlining the east-west direction indicated otherwise.
At the Roucas-Blanc, someone saw the "fireball". A nurse who wishes anonymity, also saw the phenomenon: "I live in the Plaine district. Much to my amazement, when I was at my window, I saw this thing pass. It was Sunday night, at about 07:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. At the cry that I pushed my neighbors came to the window, but it was too late. This machine had the shape of a green rocket, very bright, and threw very clear green sparks. It gave the impression of having been launched horizontally, to be quite low and to spin. Is it the same meteor that Mr. Costa, in Plan-de-Cuques, saw? I do not know, in any case I have seen it well. This is all the information I can give you."
In these testimonies from Marseilles should be added those of David Achilles, Cabriès, which locates the phenomenon at 8:30 p.m. and a dispatch from Martigues that still the same night of Sunday to Monday, reported a "fireball" likely a meteor, that shed a very bright white clarity, which broke shortly after."
We can only honor the perfect objectivity of these volunteer observers. They simply say what they saw, they do not interpret. It should be noted that they do not use the term "flying saucer". Yet they are unanimous in saying that they believe it was something else than shooting stars.
Let's imitate their caution! At most let's risk assumptions. Is the fireball in Marseilles the same as those that were seen in Vernon (Eure) the [missing part]
[Missing part]. Last month, at the theater Silvain, when a kind of shooting star "broke" in the sky just when Robert Lamoureux was on the stage, most of the audience nevertheless kept cool! They believed that it was a staging "trick" designed to showcase the popular singer.
