The Pentagon may release a highly anticipated declassified report on various unidentified aerial phenomena today. UFO enthusiasts and UFO sightings hotspots à la Roswell, New Mexico, where a flying saucer (or a weather balloon?) may have landed in July 1947, are obviously eager to hear about the contents, with some towns made famous by aliens and flying saucers hoping tourists will return to populate them as the Coronavirus pandemic eases.
Though hotly anticipated, the Pentagon report on the activities of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) may not reveal anything incredibly secret nor confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life. Still, excitement remains around the event, after all, who doesn't want to hear some kind of incredible news, maybe about faraway galaxies populated by friendly aliens maybe willing to share their advanced knowledge and technologies with us (let’s imagine them as friendly creatures as, after Coronavirus, we couldn't cope with an alien invasion). So, as we wait for the report let's go back in history to rediscover early ufologists with some links with art and fashion.
Italian painter, sculptor, illustrator and fashion designer Ernesto Michahelles (1893-1959), better known as Thayaht, had a passion for flying saucers. The inventor of the "tuta", T-shaped overalls with a belted waist, developed an interest in astronomy and UFOs in the '40s.
In 1954 he founded the C.I.R.N.O.S. (Centro Indipendente Notizie Osservazioni Spaziali – Independent Centre for the Recording of Space Information), a sort of scientific association set to study UFOs that was based in his summer house in Marina di Pietrasanta (near Lucca).
Thayaht had heard about UFO sightings in France (many sightings were recorded in the Autumn of 1954) where the engineer Aimé Michel had published the book "Lueurs sur les soucoupes volantes" (Glimmering lights on flying saucers) in 1954, followed by "Mystérieux Objets Célestes" (About Flying Saucers) in 1958.
Michel devised a theory called orthoténie, claiming that UFO sightings were concentrated along straight lines which corresponded to large circles traced and centered on the Earth. Michel's therefore claimed that the sightings occurred according to a clever and ordered pattern.
In Italy there were UFO sightings in the '50s, the most famous ones occurred in October 1954 over the Duomo and the Stadium in Florence. Thayaht, who had developed a passion for Futurism in his life, wrote a first report on UFO sightings in 1955, focusing mainly on 120 sightings that had occurred in 82 locations in Italy. He then published a second report, even more detailed than the first one, in 1958. By then sightings in Italy had multiplied as also chronicled by popular Italian weekly "La domenica del Corriere" that often dedicated to these events its imaginative illustrated covers.
Archival photos show Thayaht on the roof of his Casa Bianca (White House) in Marina di Pietrasanta with his friend Ettore Toto, next to the telescope he used for his observations. The artist had also prepared a registration form to facilitate people who witnessed UFO sightings with recording the event.
Thayaht had a passion for parapsicological analysis as well and believed in two aspects linked with UFO sightings, the "psi" and the "sigma" effect. The former consisted in a telepathic connection between the UFO and the witness of the sighting that prompted the witness to look at the sky and spot the flying saucer. The Sigma effect consisted instead in interferences on the electrical circuits of cars and on compasses. After Thayaht died in 1959, but Alberto Perego continued his studies in Italy, writing books and reports about UFOs, but Thayaht remained the only artist with some great fashion connections to have ever studied UFOs in Italy and in the rest of the world.
Comments