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The Sonora Aero Club was alleged to have been a secretive group of US flying enthusiasts, which was said to have been active in the mid-1800s, based in Sonora, California.

Charles Dellschau
The first revelation of the group came with the discovery in the 1960s of a number of notebooks, previously owned by a Charles Dellschau (1830-1923), a Prussian immigrant who had entered the country in 1853. These notebooks were annotated in both English, German and in code, but more importantly, contained drawings of heavier-than-air flying machines, said to have been flown by the club. Dirigible-like in appearance, these flying machines were not powered by hydrogen and helium as later airships would be, but rather by an anti-gravity fuel known as suppe, which one of the members was alleged to have discovered. An 'airship' was sighted by thousands of Americans across eighteen states between November 1896 and April 1897, and was accompanied by newspaper reports of these sightings, as well as a sighting from 1880