Tags & categories

Tag: Kansas

2 case files, newest first.

• 

  Oct 3, 2026 Open

  Kansas City's April Fool's Airship, 1897 — and Flagstaff's Recipe

  On the night of 1 April 1897, thousands in Kansas City watched a moving light the wire called an airship. Flagstaff reprinted the dispatch a week later. Two weeks after that, it printed a cocktail recipe for seeing one.

  • From the Archive
  • airship-wave-1897
  • mystery airship
  • Arizona
  • Missouri
  • Kansas
  • newspaper archive
  • 1897
• 

  Oct 3, 2026 Hoax

  Vernon, Kansas, 1897: The Airship That Rustled a Heifer

  During the 1897 airship wave, a Kansas rancher's story of a craft that lassoed his heifer became one of the era's best-known yarns. Kansas City's Journal treated it as comedy within days; a 1943 item quoted the local editor saying it was invented.

  • From the Archive
  • airship-wave-1897
  • mystery airship
  • hoax
  • Kansas
  • newspaper archive
  • 1897