The article below was published in the daily newspaper Var-Matin - République, Toulon, France, on January 8, 1954.
It is said it is a bolide...
Dieppe, January 7. -- This morning, between 04:30 and 05:15, nearly 70 dockers of the Dieppe Harbour saw in the sky, a dazzling gleam followed four minutes later by a formidable explosion which opened numerous doors and broke several windows of the houses of the city.
Most of the Dieppe residents were awaked by this deafening noise. The Dieppe semaphore contacted that of Fécamp and with them, all the small harbours of the coast. All agree to state that the phenomenon was seen in these various points.
However, several witnesses in Mailleraye, locality at 80 km approximately in the south of Dieppe, are categorical: they saw the gleam which came from the direction of Dieppe.
Lastly, it must be stressed that one week ago approximately, a small fishing boat arrived at Dieppe very sifted of small glares which might come from an aerolite.
This morning, at 04:27, a railroad worker which took his service in the railway station of Orchies, saw in the sky, a disc of fire which moved horizontally at a vertiginous speed. A luminous trail followed the reddish disc in its trajectory. The same phenomenon was seen about the same hour in Arras. A witness stated to have seen the disc motionless one moment in the sky.
But he did not have time to contemplate it as it resumed its race immediately and disappeared at the horizon.
A fireball
It is most likely, the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris estimates, certain that the observed phenomenon was nothing else than a bolide.
The very hour when this observation was made, little before the sunrise, contributes to support this opinion, are not rare and many others were recorded on all the surface of the globe.
It is known that the bolides are bodies whose origin and composition are little known about and who, moving in the sky at an extreme speed, warm up when they suddenly met the Earth's atmosphere because of the resistance that it opposes to them.
That is when they become incandescent. Sometimes, they pass without being reported differently than a luminous trail, sometimes with great noise. It also happens that they fall on the surface of the globe, entirely or fragmented. Such is the origin of aerolites falls.
