The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Est Républicain, France, page 7, on October 26, 1954.
Verdun (From our newsroom). "If we rely on the statements of the librarian of the town of Verdun, the mysterious devices which we notice in the sky were already preoccupying our ancestors. Indeed, Mr. Le Chanoine Boulhaut discovered yesterday a text dating from 1493 and coming from the library of the abbey of Saint-Airy, dating from the "chronicles of Nuremberg" an incunable by Hartmann Scheden.
In this otherwise valuable work, written in Latin, Scheden states that in 1034 an iron beam of curious dimensions was seen in the sky sailing from south to east, facing the setting sun and finally falling on land.
This laconic text is illustrated with a naive and moving sketch. One sees in a blue sky a sort of breach - the prefiguration of the flying cigar - surrounded by red flames, sailing over green mounds.
