14 October 2026 will mark 72 years to the day that something strange appeared over Monaco. A UFO: An Unidentified Flying Object…
Well, that is the claim of two local plumbers, Henri Palinelli and Dominique Selotti who were looking skywards in October 1954 at around 6.07pm when they reported seeing a brilliant floating sphere above a place locally known as Visiaero. They described vivid surrounding colours, “like fireworks” and an object with an appearance of molten metal. It travelled horizontally towards Italy and then disappeared after only a few seconds.
One of the men added an intriguing detail. Before seeing the luminous ball, he had always been a UFO sceptic, but not anymore. The story appeared in Le Patriote on 17 October, during one of the most extraordinary periods of UFO reporting France has ever experienced. In 1954, there was no shortage of strange things being reported over the Côte d’Azur. Nice, Antibes, Villefranche, Biot and Monaco all feature in a remarkable October wave of UFO newspaper reports.
And unlike today, there was an important technological difference. Drones were not filling the skies. That doesn’t make the sightings extraterrestrial, but it does make the question of what they could have been rather more interesting.
On 14 October, Monaco was not alone. Across southern France, numerous people reported seeing a brilliant flying object at almost exactly the same time. In Antibes, people described something moving at extraordinary speed in the sky, although their descriptions differed with some calling it a flying saucer and others a comet.
Then there was Biot. Nineteen-year-old José Casella reportedly encountered what appeared to be a smooth, aluminium-coloured object on the road at about 6.15pm. He said it rose vertically and silently before departing at incredible speed. He estimated it to be five or six metres across.
Later investigations suggested that the spectacular events around Monaco and the Côte d’Azur may have been caused, at least in part, by a meteor or bolide (a fireball meteor) passing over the region. The Monaco observations have subsequently been catalogued as explainable meteor observations. The same meteor was reportedly witnessed from numerous locations across southern France.
There were also scientific balloons in the skies around France at the time. Contemporary investigations established that some supposed flying saucers were actually high-altitude research balloons launched from Italy, carrying equipment for cosmic-ray research.
The French space agency’s GEIPAN, which has subsequently examined historical UFO reports, notes that October 1954 was particularly fertile for sightings. The enormous amount of publicity surrounding flying saucers generated a flood of reports. Many were eventually explained away as the Moon, stars, aircraft, meteors or balloons. Other sightings simply lacked enough information to determine what had been seen. GEIPAN nevertheless retains some cases marked as unexplained.
The Monaco witnesses certainly seem to have seen something, but what it was remains to be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. So, the mystery lives on as do the various claims and theories.
It is often said that ‘an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence’ to be taken seriously. But some reject that idea and note that the very claim just uttered is itself extraordinary and it too has no evidence to back itself up, so consequently shouldn’t be taken too seriously either. A so called self-refuting claim.
So, on 14 October, perhaps we can mark this anniversary in the best possible way: by looking up towards the stars. We can keep an eye on the Monaco night sky to see what we can see. Perhaps a meteor, a satellite, a passing aircraft; or maybe something that defies explanation. Whatever appears, perhaps the best way to look at an open sky, is to start by looking with an equally open mind.
A Se Revede!
References:
Le Patriote, 17 October 1954 — contemporary report of the Monaco sighting above Visiaero.
Patrick Gross, Les OVNIS vus de près, catalogue of the French 1954 UFO wave.
GEIPAN (CNES), French government agency responsible for studying unidentified aerospace phenomena.
Aimé Michel, Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery (1958).