{"id":293,"date":"2007-05-05T09:18:11","date_gmt":"2007-05-05T13:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddempire.org\/weblog\/?p=293"},"modified":"2017-11-29T22:28:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T02:28:00","slug":"folklore-of-the-space-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/2007\/05\/05\/folklore-of-the-space-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Folklore of the Space Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virtuallystrange.net\/ufo\/updates\/\">UFO Updates <\/a>for the link<\/p>\n<p>By<br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:JamesOberg.aol.com\">James Oberg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The great age of exploration in the 1500s witnessed the creation of its own folklore: sea serpents, unicorns and unipeds, the Fountain of Youth and the Seven Cities of Cibola. Not surprisingly, the young Space Age has also witnessed a similar body of myth and legend, based on rumors, travellers&#8217; tales, misinterpretations, wild imaginations, and self-serving fabrications.<\/p>\n<p>This lecture elucidates the most popular of these stories and to trace them to their sources, not merely to refute them but to understand the processes which created them and helped them spread. Their popular appeal is analyzed. Related, authentic mysteries are discussed, along with guidelines for telling the difference. The tone is humorous and sympathetic, not negative.<\/p>\n<p>In a culture of conspiracies, why not imagine a conspiracy to either &#8220;fake&#8221; the moon flights, or to conceal a vast array of moon bases &#8212; and new books, articles, WWW pages, and lectures have appeared on this theme. Meanwhile, many UFO stories around the world are based on honest public misperception of space and rocket activity. The most interesting case occurred in the Soviet Ukraine in the late 1960&#8217;s, when secret space weapons tests caused fireballs to appear frequently in the evening sky. The public reported these as &#8220;crescent-UFOs&#8221; and that&#8217;s the way they are recorded in the UFO literature. An official team from Moscow&#8217;s Academy of Sciences even published a formal study verifying that the phenomenon was unexplainable in earthly terms. But it was all a coverup of an illegal weapon which the USSR had signed a treaty promising not to deploy. Similar UFO cases from Russia, China, France, Argentina, and the US can be traced back to unusual space activities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesoberg.com\/folk.html\">[[MORE]] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to UFO Updates for the link By James Oberg The great age of exploration in the 1500s witnessed the creation of its own folklore: sea serpents, unicorns and unipeds, the Fountain of Youth and the Seven Cities of Cibola. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/2007\/05\/05\/folklore-of-the-space-age\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3208,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}