The Great Airship Flap. 1896-1897

In the history of modern UFOlogy there is a very strange period that includes the years 1896 CE to 1897 CE when the skies of the United States primarily, exploded with unidentified flying objects. Remember, that apart from Balloons, there were no other flying craft around at this time, though there is some controversy over this. Some researchers state that there were but were they in the quantities reported seen by tens of thousands of witnesses all over the North American continent, primarily the United States, from late 1896 to mid 1897. Airships that resembled Zeppelins were reported, complete with occupants of varying descriptions, incidentally all from Earth. Some going to Cuba to fight the Spanish, others going on picnic jaunts and lots of others with different reasons and agendas including requesting items or water from a host of other things, from normal, everyday people as they flew over. There are breakdowns and crashes, Aurora in Texas being the most famous, and a multitude of forms that in many cases could not fly even if they were built. Even Zeppelins were not due for another few years at least. Listen to the first reports from the northwest coast, from Washington State, Oregon and California and then observe the dynamic flow of the phenomena as it travelled east to the Midwest by early 1897 and then headed south to Texas by mid 1897. If these reports were hallucinations or staged newspaper filler, how did the mass of reports make this gigantic progress look like a royal aerial train composed of many parts as it travelled across the United States and beyond?