Case file · Sighting
Providence crowd watches the 'airship' (Venus)
On 24 December 1909, at the height of the Tillinghast scare, a young H. P. Lovecraft found a crowd in Providence staring at what they took for the airship. He identified it as the planet Venus.
1909 CE · 41.83, -71.41 · status: explained
The account
The episode is a textbook case of a bright planet mistaken for a craft during a press-fuelled wave, decades before the term 'flying saucer'.