Marc Flemming
Renovator
offline
Registered: Jan 2003
Local time: 12:29 AM
Location: Santa Cruz
Posts: 3663
|
Fifty years ago, on February 20, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower was mysteriously missing for a day during a golf vacation in Palm Springs, California. The legend is that he made a secret trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrials. At first he was declared dead, then it was announced that he went to the dentist. But since he left at night, without telling anyone where he was going, people have always been suspicious.
The trip was billed as a vacation, although it came up very suddenly. The president had taken a vacation in Georgia less than a week before. A motorcade was observed entering Muroc Air Force Base (now Edwards) on the night of the president's disappearance. The base was also the scene of many extraordinary UFO sightings, but none were reported on the night in question.
In the Washington Post, Peter Carlson writes that one of the biggest mysteries about that day is that Ike was reported as being dead. The Associated Press ran a story saying, "Pres. Eisenhower died tonight of a heart attack in Palm Springs." Two minutes later, they retracted the story and said he went to the dentist. It's unlikely that someone would confuse these two events.
What does a dentist have to say? James Mixson wrote and article for the November 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry titled "A History of Dwight D. Eisenhower's Oral Health." He says Ike’s dental records show that on the night of February 20, 1954, Ike chipped the porcelain cap of his "upper left central incisor" and it was repaired by Dr. Francis A. Purcell, who died in 1974. "The lack of a dental record from Purcell's office," Mixson says, "has helped fuel belief in this UFO encounter." But "the President had well-documented difficulties with this crown."
However, during his lifetime, Purcell refused to comment on whether or not he had treated Ike, and famed UFO investigator Stanton Friedman confirmed that there was no letter of thanks to Dr. Purcell in the Eisenhower library. Such letters were routinely sent to all persons assisting the president.
Why did the Associated Press report that Ike died that night? Eisenhower Library archivist Pankratz says, "Somebody was fooling around and it went out. It wasn't supposed to go out but it did."
Source: Unknown Country (Whitley Strieber)
|
02-24-2004 08:03 PM
