“We went on a normal outing and picked our spot,” Jim Templeton recalled of his May 23, 1964 outing. They sat down to take a picture of his 5-year-old daughter. He never expected anything out of the ordinary.
When they developed the pictures they found a figure of someone…or something.
Templeton contacted the Kodak Company. They found nothing out of the ordinary and offered a reward to anyone who could prove the photo was faked. Interestingly enough, the reward was never claimed.
The photograph eventually came to the attention of the local paper, the Cumberland News. A media frenzy followed. It was picked up by the Daily Mail and Express. Mr. Templeton began receiving letters from all over the world.
He then received a visit from two “Men in Black” who wanted to be taken to the location where the image was taken. They referred to each other only as Number 9 and Number 11.
Just days after Templeton had taken his photograph, the planned launch of a Blue Streak missile in Woomera, South Australia on the other side of the world was aborted by technicians who reported seeing two men in the firing range. Upon later seeing the Solway Spaceman picture on the front page of an Australian newspaper, they were stunned as the figure looked the same as the figures they saw close to the missile.
Templeton’s picture spiked public interest due to the space race between the United States and Soviet Union, and because the image behind his daughter looked like a NASA Astronaut.
More than four decades later, an explanation was finally found. Another photo taken that same day showed Elizabeth and her mother Annie. Annie was wearing a sleeveless dress of a very light blue color. They deducted that the “spaceman” was just Annie, with her hair tied giving the impression of an astronaut visor, walking away from her daughter. Templeton, however, remembers his wife was standing behind him when the photo was taken.
The eerie photograph can still send a chill
Janet Elizabeth Lynn
Author of mysteries, checkout my website
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I thought it would be fun to look back at the popular toys given for the holidays during the 1960s. This research brought back a flood of memories as both receiving them for gifts and buying them for the younger ones in my family. Hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane, also.
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In the 1950s, Spade Cooley was a beloved national treasure and one of the greatest stars of Western swing. But he soon became famous for something very different when he suspected his wife of having an affair and beat her to death.
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“We went on a normal outing and picked our spot,” Jim Templeton recalled of his May 23, 1964 outing. They sat down to take a picture of his 5-year-old daughter. He never expected anything out of the ordinary. When they developed the pictures they found a figure of someone…or something. Templeton contacted the Kodak Company. […]
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The genre of novels that seems to endure are the spy thrillers and stories of behind-the-scenes government scandals. Here are some very interesting and I’d even say, “watershed” novels about the cold war that have colored our vision of the past and the future. After researching some, I’ve made a list of just a few of the more influential titles and included a short synopsis of each:
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Partners in Crime, Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger write the Skylar Drake Mysteries, hard-boiled detective stories set in the 1950s.
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