Found scrapbooks reveal a society obsessed with flight, or one man’s elaborate fantasy

A dozen scrapbooks were discovered intact after a house fire — it was the 1960s, and their owner, Charles A. A. Dellschau, had died one hundred years before. The books were filled with bright, detailed artwork and descriptions of a collective of men who dreamed of flight, known as the Sonora Aero Club. Dellschau’s elaborate illustrations cover the entirety of each page, looping and twisting a frame around almost architectural sketches of fanciful dirigibles. The art has been collected and studied since its discovery, but the The Atlantic reports on the questionable truth of Dellschau’s society, which seems too unlikely to not be in the realm of fiction.