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HOUSTON RADAR. The rival Post exploded the story: the Humble Oil Co. had made the radar pickup in 1947, thought it might have been caused by a meteor. Probably the wildest story appeared in
Hearst's Los Angeles Herald & Express last month. It reported that the wreckage of a saucer had been found on a Mexican mountainside. The finder was a California explosives salesman named Ray Dimmick. The saucer was "powered by two motors," Dimmick told the Her-Ex. "It was about 46 feet in diameter . . . built of some strange material resembling aluminum." The pilot, he said, was dead. He was a "midget 23 inches tall with a big head and a small body." The Her-Ex story had been picked up by an editorial writer over a convivial round with Dimmick. Next day, after thinking it over, Dimmick decided that he had been "misquoted." He had not seen the wrecked saucer or its pilot himself; it was two other guys in Mexico City. Nevertheless, distributed deadpan by the wire services and printed in many newspapers, the Dimmick "little man" story, and variations of it, are still making the rounds. Why is the press ready to print, and the public to believe, such fantastic tales? Said Admiral Gallery last week: "If you'll look back about 500 years ago, you'll find that the people of England had a period of hysteria, when everybody was seeing flying dragons in the sky. We are going through the modern version of flying dragons."
Pitti-Sing: Corroborative detail indeed! Corroborative fiddlestick.