Some observations.
p26: Stefan Michalak's burns, claimed to be proof of a close encounter. January 1968. I wondered where I'd seen that pattern of markings before. Then got it: cookery vids on Facebook. That great staple of American breakfast cookery, the waffle iron, designed to cook batter into pancake very quickly, comes in all shapes and sizes. But always a square grid pattern. This is something that would have been available in 1968 and it would take no ingenuity to hold one against your chest/stomach for as long as it takes to add credence to a story.
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p20, the Mandela moment over
Mysteries of the Unexplained. I have to ask. How many reprints has this book gone through? For instance, I first read Desmond Morris'
Manwatching in the 1970's. I liked it: a copiously illustrated work of pop psychology that served as a useful introduction to the subject. A lot of the photos in that 1970's edition were eyecatching and, shall we say, caught the imagination of a teenage boy: the pictures were probably chosen as fanservice. (The one of a job candidate being grilled by a naked interviewer, for instance). I lost my original copy and when in the 1990's I saw a copy in a second-hand store that was virtually identical - bought it. took it home, discovered a lot of the pictures I remembered were not there. The text was the same, the pictures had changed. No longer the naked interviewer, and no longer (to illustrate the concept of relative power) the business tycoon being served coffee by a naked waitress. You
remember these things. I felt vaguely cheated and also had a Mandela Moment without being able to put a name to it.
I looked at the small print in the early part of the book:
Manwatching had first been published in 1977. Apparently I was holding a "revised third edition" published in 1990. Revision, apparently, had changed some of the pictures. My then GF snorted and said "What do you expect? Things have changed since the caveman days. No wonder they dropped those pictures!"
Could this explain where the Thunderbird went - it simply got dropped in a later reprint?