A Brief History of UFOs
On June 25th, 2021, the American Office of the Director of National Intelligence quietly released a nine page report on unidentified aerial phenomena (uap), more commonly known as unidentified flying objects (ufo).
The report was inconclusive. In essence, out of 144 recent ufo cases looked at, 143 could not be identified or explained. There have been thousands of unexplained ufo sightings just in the last 75 years. Historically, two of the first and possibly most famous modern sightings took place in 1947.
June 24, 1947. It was the middle of the day and the sky was clear. Kenneth Arnold was an amateur pilot from Idaho. He was flying a small propeller plane over Washington State. Arnold was exploring near Mount Rainer, looking for wreckage from a transport plane that had recently crashed.
Arnold was cruising at an altitude of 9,200 feet. Suddenly, the pilot was startled by a bright flash. Then more lights flashing. Nine of them.
Arnold later described what he saw in detail. The nine objects were stretched out, flying in diagonally. Arnold said they moved in unison. His first thought was they were experimental military aircraft. He calculated the speed the vehicles were moving at up to 2,000 kilometres per hour. That was three times faster than any known aircraft in use at the time.
During interviews, Arnold described the objects as “saucer-like disks”. This term soon stuck in popular culture as flying saucers. U.S. military authorities interviewed Arnold. They supported Arnold’s insistence that he saw something unusual that day. However, the official conclusion was that Arnold was either hallucinating or it was some type of mirage. The era of modern ufo sightings began.
July 7, 1947, Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer drove to the local sheriff’s office and delivered pieces of wreckage that had mysteriously fallen on his farm. It was described as a metallic light fabric. The sheriff didn’t know what to make of it and contacted the army base near Roswell.
The base sent Major Jesse Marcel to investigate further. He drove to the original site of the crash. Marcel quickly issued a statement that remnants of a “flying disc” had been found in the farmer’s field.
However, the next day, government scientists entered the crash site. Their conclusion was much different. The debris was a crashed weather balloon. The official case was closed.
But decades later, Marcel insisted the debris was not terrestrial. Marcel claimed the government had ordered him to keep quiet about what he saw that day at the farm.
Two diverging viewpoints emerged from Roswell over decades. One explanation was that the debris was part of the army’s “Project Mogul.” Mogul was reportedly a top secret operation involving high altitude balloons carrying sensitive microphones. They were used to detect distant sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb testing. One of those balloons allegedly crashed and wound up in a farmer’s field near Roswell.
Another increasingly popular view was the American government was directly involved in the “Roswell Incident,” covering up the wreckage of an extraterrestrial ship that had crashed landed. Alien bodies were alleged to have been discovered and taken for experimentation.
Perhaps we will never know exactly what occurred in Washington and Roswell that year. What is understood is that these incidents unleashed a torrent of ufo sightings around the world. Hundreds of more incidents were reported in 1947. Thousands of people were seeing objects in the sky they didn’t understand.
In 1947 the Cold War was picking up momentum. The United States and the Soviet Union were experimenting with new technologies in an effort to outdo their opponents and stay ahead in the arms race. Paranoia and suspicion were all around.
Ufo sighting never disappeared. They persisted well into the twenty-first century. Most events were debunked with scientific explanations. However, there always remained reports that continued to defy current scientific knowledge.
The latest government report acknowledged the ambiguity. There were ongoing ufo sightings witnessed by experienced pilots and navy personnel that were not easily explained away. That didn’t mean there were aliens visiting earth. But the report couldn’t conclusively rule out that possibility either.
Sources:
Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf (dni.gov)
The Man Who Introduced the World to Flying Saucers — The Atlantic
June 24, 1947: They Came From … Outer Space? | WIRED
What Really Happened at Roswell? — HISTORY
Roswell UFO crash: What is the truth behind the ‘flying saucer’ incident? | Space
