In 1896 the Professor Saw a Mysterious Orb

On November 29, 1896 the San-Jose Mercury reported that a Professor Cross had seen a mysterious orb in the sky, one he could not identify. This was before the invention of the airplane. We read this account in which the writer strangely uses the term "airship" to describe what the witness reports as being a ball of light six inches in diameter: 

"To the list of reliable witnesses. already too formidable to be lightly contradicted, concerning the existence of an aerial visitor in this neighborhood on recent nights is added one whose testimony has had great weight with many hitherto skeptical. Professor M. S. Cross, Dean of the University of the Pacific, saw the airship on its flight over East San Jose Thursday night and is convinced that it was neither a balloon, as practical doubters insists, nor an optical illusion, as is urged by more subtle skeptics. The standing of Professor Cross, both on the score of his personal reputation and the position which he holds as head of the conservative educational institution of Coast Methodism, makes his testimony of the greatest weight.

'It was about 7 o’clock when my attention was called to the airship,' said Professor Cross last evening ... 'Of course I  am not prepared to say it was an airship. Certainly it was a light moving strangely through the sky and one for which I am unable to account on any other theory. I was visiting at the residence of Professor Worcester in East San Jose Thursday night. About 7 o’clock Professor Worcester, who was in the yard, called to me to come and see the airship. I immediately rushed out, and by that time Professor Worcester said the ship had moved a considerable distance. We were not able to see any wings or anything of that kind. What we did see was a ball of light apparently about six inches in diameter. It was moving very fast in a southeasterly direction. Its motion was not steady, but it seemed to waver from side to side. Its altitude seemed to vary also as we watched it. How fast it was traveling of course I was unable to tell. It appeared to me to be going very rapidly, and if it was very far distant its speed must have been great. I am confident it was no balloon. It was going too rapidly to be carried by the wind. It was a quiet night, what little breeze there was being, if I remember correctly, from the south, yet this light traveled in a southerly direction. Furthermore, a balloon has a peculiar up and down motion which the lunging of this light in no way resembled.' "

The reported wobbly motion does not seem to match a meteor, which travels in a straight steady path, and typically streaks across the sky so quickly there's no time to call someone inside to come out and see it, with the summoned person being able to see it. And I've never heard anyone describe a meteor as a ball of light about six inches in diameter (a meteor may look about as big as a coin looks at arm's length).