Claimed sighting
The Marseilles round body on the sun
Two observers some distance apart in Marseilles each saw an unknown round body at the same point on the sun's edge.
Two separate letters in L'Astronomie, which Charles Fort draws on in New Lands, describe the sighting. The two observers were some distance apart in Marseilles. Both saw a round body against the sun, and a published sketch puts its apparent width at about a tenth of the sun's.
Both placed it on the same part of the sun's edge. Because two people in different spots lined it up the same way, the two writers took it to be nothing close to the earth, such as a balloon or a round cloud.
"They saw a round body, apparent diameter about one tenth of the apparent diameter of the sun, according to the sketch that is published. In _L’Astronomie_, these two observers write separately, and, in the city of Marseilles, their observations were made at a distance apart. But the unknown body was seen by both upon the same part of the sun’s limb. So it is supposed that it could not have been a balloon, nor a circular cloud, nor anything else very near this earth."