Word: klass
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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UFOs-IDENTIFIED by Philip J. Klass. 290 pages. Random House...
...most flying-saucer buffs, the frequent appearance of Unidentified Flying Objects near power lines is only natural; the UFOs, so the stories go, are either attempting to sabotage the power system or are merely recharging their batteries. To Author Klass, a former electrical engineer who is now an editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, there is a more logical answer: the power lines themselves may actually create UFOs in the form of coronas-clouds of glowing, ionized air that can form in intense electrical fields...
...this intelligently written and rational book (a rare phenomenon in UFO literature), Klass describes the scientific detective work that led him to decide on the probable cause of most previously unexplained UFO sightings. The enigmatic, incandescent objects, he concludes, are really a family of atmospheric phenomena that include not only coronas but ball lightning, St. Elmo's fire and "Foo Fighters," the same luminous globs that tailed World War II military aircraft. Klass seems resigned to the fact that it will take more than his well-documented evidence to shake dedicated saucer believers out of their state of UFOria...
...unverified atmospheric effects that could account for most of the unidentified apparitions. Astronomer Donald Menzel, former director of the Harvard College Observatory, believes that atmospheric refractions sometimes both magnify and bend the light from bright stars, causing them to resemble large and erratically moving disks. Electrical Engineer Philip Klass, an editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, speculates that many UFOs may be a form of ball lightning generated by an electric corona that sometimes occurs on high-tension power lines, near which saucers are often sighted...
Last week it did. Louisiana Democrat Willis started contempt proceedings against not only Shelton but six other United Klan nabobs (including four Grand Dragons, an Imperial Klass and an Imperial Kludd) who had been equally uncooperative. If the citations are approved by the full committee and the House, the Klansmen will be subject to prosecution and sentences of up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines each. That prospect, at least, unclammed Shelton. He was not in contempt of either Congress or the committee, he snorted, but only of the "martini-bibbing, character-assassinating and truth-twisting...