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The Solway Firth Spaceman

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Oddity

The Resume

    Figure, apparently wearing a spacesuit, seen in the background of a photo taken by Jim Templeton of his five-year-old daughter Elizabeth during a day trip to Burgh Marsh overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria, England (May 23, 1964)

Why The Solway Firth Spaceman might be annoying:

    Templeton claimed that after the picture was published in a local newspaper, two men claiming to be from the government showed up, demanded to see the location where the picture was taken, then drove off, leaving him to walk home.
    The Ministry of Defense responded to inquiries by ufologists by saying the picture was of no interest to them.
    Templeton said, 'In the four decades the photo has been in public domain, I have had many thousands of letters from all over the world with various ideas as possibilities -- most of which make little sense to me.'
    Investigative journalist David Clarke concluded that the 'spaceman' was Templeton's wife Annie, standing with her back to the camera (2012).
    Annie had been wearing a pale blue dress that showed as white due to overexposure in other photos taken the same day.
    The 'visor' on the spacesuit is presumably Annie's dark bobbed hair.
    Clarke suggested that Jim failed to notice his wife because the make of camera he used (a Kodak SLR) let the user see only 70% of the shot through the viewfinder.
    Even without that explanation, which sounds more likely: a photographer failing to notice his wife walking into a shot, or the photographer, his wife, and their daughter all failing to notice someone in a spacesuit wandering about the general vicinity.

Why The Solway Firth Spaceman might not be annoying:

    Analysts from Kodak confirmed the photo was genuine and not the result of double exposures or other trickery.
    Templeton later dismissed his encounter with the government men as a prank: 'It all looks like a leg pull to me. I'm sure the men were not security agents.'
    Clarke said, 'For me, it is one of the most impressive anomalous images in supernatural investigations, and people will still be talking about it in another fifty years.'
    At least among the abductors and probers, there are some aliens up to nothing more malicious than photobombing holiday snaps.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying