about 4 P.M.
There Professor Newland 's assistant , Professor Brighton , stated he had again observed a new `` star '' -- an interplanetary vehicle , as Professor Newland described it . Only a single one had been observed this time . It was seen just before dawn of the 9th . Then , about 4 P.M. , Atlantic time , on the afternoon of the 9th , the world was electrified by the report of the landing of invaders in the United States . The news came by wireless from Billings , Montana . An interplanetary vehicle of huge size had landed on the desert in the Shoshone River district of northern Wyoming , west of the Big Horn Mountains . This strange visitor -- it was described as a gleaming , silvery object perhaps a hundred feet in diameter -- had landed near the little Mormon settlement of Byron .