I am thinking of two recurring stories known to many on the KeelyNet list.
(Although apparently not as many as there used to be, so I'm posting this
publicly.) I don't have time to find the references right now, but I'll
explain what I can from memory.
The first is interesting because it is, apparently, a hoax, but a hoax that
has appeared several times! It concerns someone claiming to have a magic
powder that will turn water into gasoline. This powder is usually, for some
reason, green.
The second concerns a series of UFO sightings in the USA during the mid and
late 1890s. These UFOs looked like dirigibles except that the gondola was
obviously much too large for the gas bag to lift, to say nothing of the fact
that there was no known process for filling a gas bag of that size with
anything other than hot air, which they didn't seem to be using because they
flew all over the country at unheard-of speeds. Eventually, several people
appeared who claimed to know the secret, but they all disappeared later.
Two of them independently described something that sounds like something
Keely might have invented, although there is no apparent connection between
these sightings and Keely's own levitation research. Another one described
a special gas generator that produced a gas of incredible lifting power by
dripping water onto a secret mineral composition in a rotating chamber. I
may be wrong, but I seem to remember one description of this mineral being
green.
What if someone stumbled upon a mineral or combination of minerals which
would provide spontaneous dissociation of water? What if, furthermore,
there was some way of creating something lighter than hydrogen by ZPE
confinement transmutation ("cold fusion")?
--"Withdraw in disgust is not the same thing as apathy." --R.E.M.