Ufo what is it

unidentified flying object

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unidentified flying object (UFO), also called flying saucer, any aerial object or optical phenomenon not readily identifiable to the observer. UFOs became a major subject of interest following the development of rocketry after World War II and were thought by some researchers to be intelligent extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.

History

Flying saucers and Project Blue Book

The first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane. Arnold estimated the speed of the crescent-shaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term flying saucer.

Sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena increased, and in 1948 the U.S. Air Force began an investigation of these reports called Project Sign. The initial opinion of those involved with the project was that the UFOs were most likely sophisticated Soviet aircraft, although some researchers suggested that they might be spacecraft from other worlds, the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). Within a year, Project Sign was succeeded by Project Grudge, which in 1952 was itself replaced by the longest-lived of the official inquiries into UFOs, Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From 1952 to 1969 Project Blue Book compiled reports of more than 12,000 sightings or events, each of which was ultimately classified as (1) “identified” with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial (human-caused) phenomenon or (2) “unidentified.” The latter category, approximately 6 percent of the total, included cases for which there was insufficient information to make an identification with a known phenomenon.

The Robertson Panel and the Condon Report

An American obsession with the UFO phenomenon was under way. In the hot summer of 1952 a provocative series of radar and visual sightings occurred near National Airport in Washington, D.C. Although these events were attributed to temperature inversions in the air over the city, not everyone was convinced by this explanation. Meanwhile, the number of UFO reports had climbed to a record high. This led the Central Intelligence Agency to prompt the U.S. government to establish an expert panel of scientists to investigate the phenomena. The panel was headed by H.P. Robertson, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and included other physicists, an astronomer, and a rocket engineer. The Robertson Panel met for three days in 1953 and interviewed military officers and the head of Project Blue Book. They also reviewed films and photographs of UFOs. Their conclusions were that (1) 90 percent of the sightings could be easily attributed to astronomical and meteorologic phenomena (e.g., bright planets and stars, meteors, auroras, ion clouds) or to such earthly objects as aircraft, balloons, birds, and searchlights, (2) there was no obvious security threat, and (3) there was no evidence to support the ETH. Parts of the panel’s report were kept classified until 1979, and this long period of secrecy helped fuel suspicions of a government cover-up.

A second committee was set up in 1966 at the request of the Air Force to review the most interesting material gathered by Project Blue Book. Two years later this committee, which made a detailed study of 59 UFO sightings, released its results as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects—also known as the Condon Report, named for Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headed the investigation. The Condon Report was reviewed by a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 37 scientists wrote chapters or parts of chapters for the report, which covered investigations of the 59 UFO sightings in detail. Like the Robertson Panel, the committee concluded that there was no evidence of anything other than commonplace phenomena in the reports and that UFOs did not warrant further investigation. This, together with a decline in sighting activity, led to the dismantling of Project Blue Book in 1969.

What exactly are UFOs?

For thousands of years, people have reported seeing strange lights and objects flying through the sky. Today, these unexplained phenomena are commonly called UFOs.

But what exactly are UFOs? Are they visitors from another world? Where have famous sightings happened? Keep reading to find out!

What does UFO stand for?

Although people have claimed to see strange objects in the sky for much of human history, UFO is a fairly new term. It’s an acronym (a word formed from the initial letters of a set of words) that stands for Unidentified Flying Object.

The term first appeared in the 1950s, and up until then these weird objects were known by another name: flying saucers. This is because many of the sightings described floating, disc-shaped objects.

The term UFO was originally meant for any unknown object people saw in the sky, but it quickly became attached to sightings of crafts that were thought to be from other planets.

Are UFOs really from other worlds?

Some people believe that UFOs are actually vehicles from other planets, flown by alien visitors. Others have even claimed to have been abducted by these eerie, floating vessels.

Though there has never been any hard evidence of aliens, it’s impossible to completely rule them out.

Many of the reports we have on UFOs come from pilots who have claimed to see flying objects that don’t look or behave like any aircraft they have ever seen before!

So, are UFOs really alien in nature? While there haven’t been a large number of scientific studies done on these phenomena, different governments have looked into them.

If UFOs aren’t alien spaceships, what are they?

In most UFO sightings, what people believe are UFOs are actually just common objects like planes and clouds, or celestial events like meteors and planets that seem unusually bright.

Some cases remain unidentified even after they’ve been investigated, but scientists believe many of these to also be sightings of more common objects that people simply didn’t recognize.

Many reported UFO sightings actually turn out to be something as simple as a balloon.

What’s the most famous UFO sighting?

Probably the best-known sighting of a UFO happened in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. That summer, a local farmer found piles of strange debris in a pasture.

Officials from the nearby Roswell Army Air Force Base claimed the debris was simply wreckage from a crashed weather balloon.

Eventually, in the 1990s, a government report revealed that the crashed object wasn’t a weather balloon. It was actually a surveillance device that was part of a top-secret operation called Project Mogul that often employed balloons.

What is a UFO?

An unidentified flying object (UFO) is an object which is observed in the sky, but cannot be identified. While people have been spotting mysterious objects in the sky for centuries, claims of UFO sightings exploded in the wake of the Second World War. Attitudes about UFOs vary widely, with some people believing that such objects have a perfectly logical scientific explanation, while others have suggested that the origin of UFOs is paranormal in nature. People who support a paranormal explanation for UFOs are sometimes referred to as “believers,” referencing the idea that they believe in paranormal phenomena.

It may come as a surprise to learn that the vast number of UFO sightings reported each year are later downgraded to “IFOs,” or identified flying objects. Claims of genuine UFOs are rare, and hard to confirm, usually due to lack of photographic evidence or reliable witnesses. Some believers accuse skeptics of suppressing evidence which would support a more paranormal explanation for UFOs, arguing that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth.

The UFO craze really started in 1947, when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a flying object which he likened to a saucer, coining the term “flying saucer” along the way. Arnold was viewed as a reasonably credible witness, and his sketches of the mysterious object got a lot of press, undoubtedly inflaming the collective imagination. Today, UFO believers can share information about sightings, along with conspiracy theories, on numerous websites and forums.

When examining the history of the UFO, it is interesting to note that sightings greatly increased after the close of World War Two, when numerous nations started experimenting with cutting-edge aircraft. Experimental aircraft associated with the military obviously have to be tested at some point, and such aircraft often look extremely strange. Due to security reasons, sightings of experimental aircraft cannot be confirmed or explained, so it is possible that the UFOs which believers think are whizzing across the sky at all hours are actually just extremely sophisticated planes.

It should also be noted that UFO sightings have historically been very high in the Southwest, a region which has been used as a military proving ground for a very long time. Other UFO sightings around the world often happen to occur near military bases and research facilities, further supporting the idea that these unidentified objects remain obscure for security reasons, rather than mysterious ones.

Some UFOs do indeed look like aircraft of some form, leading people to suggest that they are examples of alien technology, despite lack of confirmation. Others take the form of moving lights and random floating shapes. In most cases, mundane explanations like the weather can be used to dismiss UFO claims, but believers still retain their hope that “the truth is out there,” as they say in the X-Files series.

Ever since she began contributing to the site several years ago, Mary has embraced the exciting challenge of being a wiseGEEK researcher and writer. Mary has a liberal arts degree from Goddard College and spends her free time reading, cooking, and exploring the great outdoors.

Mary McMahon

Ever since she began contributing to the site several years ago, Mary has embraced the exciting challenge of being a wiseGEEK researcher and writer. Mary has a liberal arts degree from Goddard College and spends her free time reading, cooking, and exploring the great outdoors.

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Discussion Comments

Some UFOs are real. I haven’t had a classic UFO sighting, but there are some strange things going on in our American skies and on our land. And UFOs flying by aren’t the only weird things happening.

I lived in an apartment community for 20 years, on the fifth floor, the roof overhead. I have seen the following strange things:

It’s daytime and I’m looking out the window. I look down and see a tricolor light appear out of nowhere at the 2nd floor level some two feet from the building. A car is stalling some 30 feet away as this light rises moderately fast, the three lights (yellow, white and black, I think) intertwined (think DNA strands) AS they rose. Just beyond the height of the roof, they exploded into a brilliant white light., the car started and I stood there with my mouth wide open in disbelief. No one was below or running from the area.

A silver sphere zoomed downhill past the building across the street in broad daylight. It was moving so fast, I felt the word “whoosh” and my heart began pounding. The sphere had to rise to clear the roof of the next building then it dipped back down and continued on its way.

A gleaming white airplane without wings, hovered slowly approached my building, stopping and hovering partly over the roof. I looked out my living room window at it. It was noisy like a plane. It was reflecting the sun and stayed there for about five minutes before continuing on over the roof. I began to wonder if it was a blimp, only why was it so close to the building—hell, another foot or two downward and it could have landed.

One night I was looking up at a star very high up in the sky. I didn’t remember it ever being near a particular constellation (Orion?) and I thought to myself, “You’re not a star. You’re just pretending to be one.” Hot Damn, if right away, it began to move leftward then made a sharp angle upwards (an L-shaped turn) and continued on until it was no longer visible.

Several nights I saw shooting stars, a few times right after I finished thinking a “particular thing”. About three of the streaks disappeared with a small flash.

In the wee hour of one morning, I saw two “birds” flying side by side over my roof. They were a mauvy color as if light was reflecting on them somehow.

Two days later, I saw an inverted triangular “UFO” approach my building, glide at a moderately fast pace over my building. I almost broke my neck getting to the window across the room to see this “UFO” clear the roof. I caught just a bit of it before it glided rightward out of sight. It had the same queer mauvy color as the “birds”. This sighting had a weird dreamy feel to it. I was definitely awake. I think it may have been a thought projection. Looked awfully real. The color was queer. The sky was overcast. I’m not good at determining size but it wasn’t more than 55 feet in the air and comparing it to the width of my living room, it was only about six feet wide and about 75% the width of the wingless plane at another time.

At 6:30 one afternoon, it was dark cloudy and it began to rain. At 7:00 it stopped raining and the sun appeared out of a patch of clouds. According to the account for August 4, 1991, “the sun seemed to be moving while the clouds appeared to remain stationery”. The sun was bright yellow or white but when it began to move under the clouds it started to turn bright pink. When the sun emerged from the clouds, it was very bright and “appeared to have a gray circle in the middle of it that became more prominent (in color depth) and appeared to be spinning, rocking up and down, back and forth. Always there was the bright outline (at the edge of the gray) of what I felt was actually the sun. It seems as if something set itself in front of the sun as if to duplicate it.” I could look directly at it, and remember thinking, “How strange, I thought the sun couldn’t be looked at directly with the naked eye?” I called my daughter into the room and asked her to look at the “sun” and tell me what she saw. She also saw that the center was gray and spinning. I stared at this spinning disk. “Also, I see intense colors, such as red and blue.” I looked away to the white wall of my living room and saw “after-affect colors, such as lime green and some sparse appearances of blue intermingled”.

On January 9, 1995, I wrote: “Today at 4:30 on the Donahue Show, he was talking about visions of Christ and Mary. One man who had been at Medigore (sorry about the spelling) saw the sun which people claimed left its place in the sky and pulsated. He said that he thought no one could look directly at the sun without losing their sight, but he was able to look at it, and he saw a gray whirling circle.”

Two months later in 1991, I dreamed of seeing two UFOs. There was a large dark oval-shaped craft (I called the mothership) parked on the ground and a large gray disk sitting or hovering over it. “There were many lights and I tried to count the windows, some of them had no lights on. All or most of the windows were round. As I tried to count (them), the disk rose straight upwards and I saw the underside of it…” I greedily tried to take in all I saw—the deep grooved piping underneath. “I lost sight of the disk and (looked) back at the cigar-shaped craft. It had at least three larger lighted windows, which I now believe were square…”. “I looked to my left and saw the disk above, and it was bigger than an airplane. But it was not lit as it was earlier. At this point I awoke.” The disk hovered just above roof level some five feet from my window, and its central underside was recessed.. Outside, the lighting matched the dream’s exactly. (It was dark at the start of the dream then the sky was just turning light when it ended.) It felt so real, only waking up made it a dream.

And I’ve had several dreams of standing in front of a double window beside a short alien in the dark of my then current living room. I’d smile at him and we’d look out the window at moving stars, monitoring balls or UFOs flying about in the sky. There is usually a flat UFO either leaving or entering the apt. through a parted window or a UFO is coming from the hallway and turning into the living room. We’d silently watch them come and go.

Unidentified flying object

UFO or unidentified flying object, in the original, literal sense means any airborne object whose nature is not readily known.

Since the mid-twentieth century, UFOs have been the subject of thousands of books, motion pictures, songs, documentaries, and other media. UFO topics were amongst the most popular on early BBSes, and millions of people have some degree of interest in the subject. There have been studies of UFO enthusiast subcultures from an anthropological persepctive. A 1996 Gallup poll shows that 71% of the U.S. population believes that the Government is covering up some information about UFOs.

Contents

Typical reported characteristics of UFOs [ ]

The number of different shapes, sizes and configurations of claimed UFOs has been large, with detailed descriptions of chevrons, equilateral triangles, spheres, domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs and cylinders being prevalent. Skeptics argue this diversity of shapes, size and configurations points to a socio-psychological explanation. Professed experiencers and believers reply that the volume of highly detailed sightings reported by witnesses from commercial airline pilots to United States presidents possesses strong consistency and cannot be explained away as mundane phenomena (weather balloons, aircraft, venus), arguing for the non-conventional interpretation.

Origins of the term «flying saucer» [ ]

The nine objects Kenneth Arnold said he saw were not saucer-shaped. Drawings showed something more resembling a flying wing style aircraft. However, he described their movement as a kind of skipping, like a saucer skimmed over water. Press reports picked up the «like a saucer» phrase, and reported it as a «flying saucer».

There are also pictures of an object looking like a saucer with three big balls underneath, which according to the photographer was flying through the air. This photo has long been believed to be ‘the real thing’, untill the photographer confessed it was actually a plate (thus really a saucer) with 3 meatballs that he flung in the air, photographed out of focus and turned upside-down (the man owned a fastfood shack where he sold meatballs amongst others).

George Adamski contributed to the popularity of this term with his books, such as «Flying Saucers Have Landed» ( 1953 ), despite that book having been based on fiction but presented as fact.

Analysis [ ]

Ufology is the study of UFO reports and evidence.

Most mainstream scientists have found existing UFO evidence unpersuasive, and consider such evidence and sightings misidentification of natural phenomena or hoaxes. Some professionals and academics have argued that while current evidence may be lacking, evidence should be evaluated objectively as it arises.

Others — including many amateurs — continue research and consider the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs a possibility.

UFOs have been subject to many studies over the years, with a wide range of scope and scientific rigor. Perhaps the best known study was Project Blue Book, conducted by the United States Air Force.

The study of UFO claims over the years has led to valuable discoveries about atmospheric phenomena and psychology. In psychology, the study of UFO sightings has revealed information on misinterpretation, perceptual illusions, hallucination and fantasy-prone personality which may explain why some people are willing to believe hoaxers such as George Adamski. Many have questioned the reliability of hypnosis in UFO abduction cases.

Some in the scientific community feel there is enough evidence to warrant further investigation efforts, comparing it to the period in the history of Meteorite research when there was only witness testimony available. But others—perhaps a majority—feel that the subject is a waste of time, due to a number of factors, including unreliable witnesses. Some feel that it is still a worthwhile topic because of open questions about the psychology of why and how law enforcement personnel and aircraft pilots allegedly hallucinate detailed UFO from time to time. Thus, some will say the topic is really about «inner-space» instead of outer-space.

It is sometimes said that «extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence»; but many pro-research groups only claim that the topic deserves further investigation, not that UFO are necessarily alien craft. The threshold of evidence for further investigation is lower than that for a conclusion about the nature of UFO.

Skeptics say there are indeed genuine sightings of strange flying objects which are usually logically explained, that no physical evidence of an alien spacecraft has ever been produced, and that many claims have been disproven as fraudulent. They also point out that the burden of proof lies with whomever makes a claim, and that it is not up to someone else to disprove each and every piece of evidence believers come up with.

Believers and conspiracy theorists in their turn argue that the subject is predjudiced by ridicule and stigma, that an extremely large body of undisproven evidence also exists, including photography, motion video, and multiple independently corroborated sworn affadavits. They also contend regarding physical evidence that it exists abundantly but is swiftly and sometimes clumsily suppressed by governmental entities, not always uniform, with a strong agenda to insulate a population they regard as psychologically not yet prepared for the social, theological, and security implications of such a reality.

The field of UFOs does not necessarily overlap the paranormal, although in practice it often does. The UFO phenomenon need not have a paranormal explanation, though some who believe in UFOs also have a fascination with the paranormal.

Conspiracies [ ]

UFOs are sometimes claimed to be part of an elaborate conspiracy theory in which the government is said to be intentionally covering up the existence of aliens, or sometimes collaborating with them.

Mystical and religious aspects of UFOs [ ]

Much mysticism has arisen around UFOs. Several religions have UFOs as a component of their mythology:

Some have common beliefs around UFOs mixed with Christian elements:

Erich von Däniken goes the other way round and states that many old religions were influenced by UFOs. He claims to have found evidence in old Aztec, Inca and ancient Egypt temples that phenomena indentified as signs of Gods were the same as actual unindentified flying objects. In his book Were The Gods Astronauts, von Däniken goes beyond and states that those objects were in fact alien visitors who landed in earth a thousand years ago and influenced deeply in the birth of civilizations.

UFO: Everything we know so far about the flying saucer phenomena

In May 2022, t wo senior U.S. defense intelligence officials appeared before a House of Representatives intelligence subcommittee hearing on UFOs. It was the first public U.S. congressional hearing on the subject in fifty years. The hearing came 11 months after a government report documented more than 140 cases of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, observed by U.S. military pilots since 2004.

According to a 2021 research report by the Pew Research Center, slightly more than half of Americans regard UFO sightings reported by people in the military as likely evidence of intelligent life outside Earth. Around 40% of these say that military-reported UFOs are “probably” evidence of extraterrestrial life.

By and large, the public does not view UFOs as a major threat to the country. In the same survey, 87% of respondents said that UFOs are not a threat or are a minor threat. Just one in ten felt UFOs are a major threat to U.S. national security.

Military officials have a different view. Defense Department officials have previously commented that unidentified flying objects are real and pose a potentially serious threat to the country. However, military officials also do not generally consider UFOs to have an extraterrestrial origin. Instead, military officials believe that nearly all unexplained events can be explained with more research and observation.

Who gave the term UFO?

A UFO drawing from the CIA. Source: CIA/Wikimedia Commons

Any flying object that you see in the sky but can not confirm its identity is a UFO. Many conspiracy theorists believe that such unidentifiable objects are actually alien spaceships that arrive on Earth from a different planet. The UFO concept gained popularity during the Cold War era when many countries including the US were increasing their air combat capabilities by developing new types of fighter planes and related technologies.

The modern era of UFO sightings began in the year 1947. On June 24 of that year, American aviator Kenneth Arnold claimed reported seeing nine, bright blue-white objects flying in a “V” formation over Washington’s Mount Rainier.

He estimated their speed at an amazing 1700 mph, and compared their motion to “a saucer if you skip it across the water.” Newspaper reports at the time misinterpreted this and described the objects as «flying saucers».

Thousands of UFO sightings were reported in the years after the “flying saucer” news and UFOs became such a complicated matter that even US Air Force began investigating the sightings secretly. In the 1950s, Air Force Captain Edward James Ruppelt initially headed up an investigation into UFO sightings under a project code-named Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, had two primary objectives: to perform a scientific analysis of all the UFO-related data available at that time and to find out if UFOs should be considered a threat to national security.

During their investigation, Ruppelt’s team, and those that followed, eventually reached the conclusions that no UFO that had been reported or evaluated was ever a threat to national security; that there was no evidence that the sightings represented technology outside the understanding of modern science; and that there was no evidence the sightings were extraterrestrial in nature.

They also concluded that the description of «flying saucers» did not fit all the UFO sightings. Many reports of unknown flying objects described objects that appeared completely different from that of a flying disc or a flying saucer. So a new and more suitable term ‘UFO’ meaning unidentified flying object was coined by Ruppelt, however, some sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary suggest that the term was first applied by American marine aviator and writer Donald Edward Keyhoe in 1953.

Most sensational UFO sightings

Photograph of a purported UFO in Passaic. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Recently, on May 17, 2022, the first public congressional hearing concerning UFOs was held at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. During the hearing, Pentagon confirmed that military personnel had reported at least 400 UFO incidents between 2004 and 2022. Interestingly, until 2021, the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) task force admitted to only 144 UFO encounters.

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, Scott W. Bray said at the hearing «We’ve seen an increasing number of unauthorized and or unidentified aircraft or objects and military control training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace,” he further added, “I can’t point to something that definitively was not man-made, but I can point to a number of examples which remain unresolved.»

Apart from the events that were discussed during the recent congressional hearing, there have been numerous UFO sightings in the past that still excites ufologists (people who investigate UFOs and related phenomena) and raise curiosity in the minds of the general public. These famous UFO sightings have even led many people to believe that UFOs sightings are linked to aliens, but the government does not want the public to know about it.

Here are some of the most incredible UFO incidents:

The Roswell incident

In June or July 1947, rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel found a wreckage on his property, around 75 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. The wreckage included materials such as rubber strips, tinfoil, and thick paper. He took some of the material to the Roswell sheriff, who in turn brought it to the attention of Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).

The RAAF released a statement, saying, “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County.”

The local paper, the Roswell Daily Record, ran a story that included the press statement, but Army officials quickly released a new statement, stating that the found debris was actually from a weather balloon.

In the years that followed, many ufologists and conspiracy theorists remained highly skeptical about the government’s conflicting accounts, and have claimed, although without evidence, that multiple UFOs containing extraterrestrial beings have crashed at the Roswell site and the government had both the spaceships and the aliens under its custody.

In an interview, Kevin D. Randle, an army veteran turned ufologist told All About Space, «everyone agrees that something fell at Roswell, but there is no terrestrial explanation.» However, the US Air Force has rejected all the alien and UFO-related claims. It released a report in 1994 admitting that the weather balloon story was fake but claiming the wreckage came from a then-classified spy device. The device consisted of a connected string of high-altitude balloons equipped with microphones and was intended to float silently over the USSR, monitoring Soviet nuclear tests. The report claimed the fake weather balloon story was an attempt to conceal the existence of the secret spy project.

Needless to say, ufologists weren’t buying it.

The Levelland alien attack

Farmworkers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz in Levelland, Texas, claimed to have encountered 200-foot rocket-shaped UFO on November 2, 1957. Frightened by the incident, they told the local sheriff that an unidentified flying object accompanied by a blue flashlight had been about to collide with their truck, making them jump out of their vehicle. Although the UFO didn’t hit the truck, when it passed by, it messed with the electronic system of their vehicle causing its engine and lights to stop working.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only UFO encounter that happened that day. Many locals including motorist Jim Wheeler, Texas Technological College student Newell Wright, and Levelland’s fire commissioner Ray Jones reported incidents describing blue light flashes, strange objects, and car electronics and engine system failures on the road. However, later, the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigated the claims and concluded that the sightings and electronic malfunction in the vehicles were due to intense electrical storms and ball lightning events.

Westall UFO sighting

Hundreds of students and teachers at the Westall Secondary College in Clayton South city in Australia reported seeing a flying saucer-shaped UFO on April 6, 1966. No photos were taken but many eyewitnesses claimed in different interviews of seen a UFO.

However, later officials from the local weather bureau said that they released a weather balloon the same day. They claimed that the balloon could have landed in the college field and probably mistaken for a UFO. The Royal Australian Air Force also disapproved of claims suggesting any unexplained aerial phenomena in the sky on April 6.

However, more recently, in 2021, one of the teachers, Andrew Greenwood, who witnessed the event claimed that after the event, two men claiming to be government officials came to his home. The men told Greenwood that he «was mistaken about what he saw» and should not say anything more about it. According to Greenwood, when he protested, the men threatened to have him fired.

President Ronald Reagon encountered UFOs twice

These are one of the most talked-about UFO sightings in American history. Some reports claim that long before Ronald Reagon became the US president, he saw UFOs. The first encounter supposedly took place in the 1950s when Reagon was going to actor William Holden’s home in Hollywood to attend a party. American actress Lucille Ball who was also present there reveals in the book Lucy in the Afternoon that Reagon and his wife Nancy admitted to having spotted a UFO on their way to Los Angeles.

Reagan again saw a strange aerial phenomenon in 1974, while he was governor of California. This time he was flying in a Cessna, on the way to Bakersfield with two security guards, when his pilot Bill Paynter observed a strange blight light following his plane. “Everyone on the plane was surprised….the UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly. If you give an airplane power, it will accelerate-but not like a hot rod, and that’s what this was like,» said Paynter.

Unsurprisingly, Reagan remained tight-lipped about his UFO encounters during his presidential tenure. However, he did use the theme of alien encounters in a speech to the UN regarding the reduction of Cold War tension, where he said, » What if all of us in the world were threatened by an outer power, from outer space, from another planet. We would all of a sudden find out that we didn’t have any differences at all.» Perhaps he knew something after all.

A fleet of UFOs arrived in Belgium

A wave of triangular-shaped UFOs was seen in the skyline over Belgian for over several weeks in November 1989 and March 1990. During the sightings, more than 13,000 people reported seeing large black triangles hovering in the sky. The Belgian Air Force also detected strange objects on their radar system and sent two F-16 fighter planes to investigate the matter.

A supposed photograph of the triangular UFOs. Source: J.S. Henrardi/Wikimedia Commons

The pilots also detected some radar activity for some seconds but didn’t notice any UFO flying in the sky during their search operations. Later, many scholars and experts who studied the Belgian UFO wave highlighted that SOBEPS, a team of ufologists who claimed to have been investigating the events had spread misinformation and created a mass delusion. The researchers pointed out that SOBEPS used the news to manipulate people into believing that anything unusual in the sky could be a UFO.

Interesting facts about UFOs and related sightings

Here are some cool and less known UFO facts:

Recently, NASA has also decided to get involved in the UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) investigations. The decision has come after the congressional hearing on UFOs during which the U.S, House also discussed the security risks associated with unknown flying objects. A NASA representative said, “[We are] evaluating how to provide our expertise in space-based Earth observations to improve understanding of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs)”.

We don’t know for sure whether or not UFOs of extraterrestrial origin exist for real. However, the growing interest of the government, scientists, and research agencies like NASA in UFO investigation is a good sign. Their collective efforts could possibly bring out logical explanations for the many UFO sightings that take place every year, plus it would make the general public more aware of this enticing subject.