Today is a big day for all believers of little green men and space ant overlords - today is the anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting - the first UFO sighting of the modern era that also brought the idea of "flying saucers" into the public's imaginations.
On June 24th 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying over Washington for a business trip, when he noticed a series of objects flying past Mt Rainier. He rocked his plane around, changed the direction and altitude, and even opened his side window to try and determine if they could be lights or objects in the cockpit playing tricks on him, and came to the conclusion they truly were what he suspected - a group of metallic saucer-like crafts travelling at about 1,700 MPH, three times faster than the speed of any known craft in 1947.
Kenneth's claim of the event became national news, eventually prompting an army investigation as UFO reports surged to 853 sightings in that year alone, 16 of which were believed to be linked to Arnold's sighting. Explanations from experts claimed the crafts may have actually been meteors, a mirage, and even pelicans, though Arnold and the rest of the public were adamant the crafts were aliens. Not mirage aliens, or alien pelicans, but alien aliens.
Up until Arnold's story broke, there'd only been a couple of notable UFO sightings in the press - however these events (the Foo Fighters during WWII and the Battle of Los Angeles in '42) were believed to have been military-related at the time, but Arnold's was billed as alien straight from the get go, and featured the now infamous description of the objects being "saucer-like". With the Roswell Incident taking place a mere month prior also, though not widely reported just yet, the Kenneth Arnold sighting is now credited to be the launching pad for the UFO phenomenon that we know and love today.
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