The most generic definition of an Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO, is any flying object or phenomenon that cannot be identified by the observer. Various studies show that after investigation, the majority of UFOs are usually identified, and are relabeled IFOs or Identified Flying Objects. Therefore, some stricter definitions reserve the label "UFO" for only those instances where the objects remain unexplained after a proper investigation.[2] The percentages of IFOs vs. UFOs varies with the researchers, study, and case sample, ranging from only 5% to 10% being UFOs, according to The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, [9] to 20% to 30% being UFOs according to earlier U.S. Air Force statistics or the later Condon Committee.[3]
UFOs have been spotted in many different places around the world. Reports of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times,[4][5][6][7] but modern reports and first official investigations began during World War II with sightings of so-called foo fighters by Allied airplane crews and in 1946 with widespread sightings of European "ghost rockets." UFO reports became even more common after the first widely publicized United States UFO sighting, by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in the summer of 1947. Many tens of thousands of UFO reports have since been made worldwide
Unusual aerial phenomena have been reported throughout history.[10] Some of these phenomena were undoubtedly astronomical in nature: comets, bright meteors, one or more of the five planets which can be seen with the naked eye, planetary conjunctions, or atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds.[11] An example is the Comet Halley, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 B.C. and possibly as early as 467 B.C.[12]
"The Baptism of Christ", 1710, by Aert de Gelder. UFO proponents have drawn comparisons between modern UFO reports and aerial objects depicted in historical art, such as this religious painting.Other historical reports seem to defy prosaic explanation, but assessing such accounts is difficult, because the information in a historical document may be insufficient, inaccurate, or embellished enough to make an informed evaluation difficult.
For example, in the Old Testament of the Bible, Ezekiel apparently had a first-hand encounter with something that might now be described as an Unidentified Flying Object, but which the Bible describes as a fiery chariot.
Whatever their actual cause, such sightings throughout history were often treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens.[13][14] Art historian Daniela Giordano cites many Medieval-era paintings, frescoes, tapestries and other items that depict unusual aerial objects; she acknowledges many of these paintings are difficult to interpret, but cites some that depict airborne saucers and domed-saucer shapes that are often strikingly similar to UFO reports from later centuries.[15] (See List of UFO sightings)
Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a Song Chinese government scholar-official and prolific polymathic inventor and scholar, wrote a vivid passage in his Dream Pool Essays (1088) about an unidentified flying object. He recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses in 11th century Anhui and Jiangsu (especially in the city of Yangzhou), who stated that a flying object with opening doors would emit a blinding light from its interior (from an object shaped like a pearl) that would cast shadows from trees for ten miles in radius, and was able to take off at tremendous speeds.[16]
Pre Modern reports
Main article: List of UFO sightings
Photo of a purported UFO over New Hampshire in 1870; known as the mystery airship.Before the terms “flying saucer” and “UFO” were coined in the late 1940s, there were a number of reports of unidentified aerial phenomena in the West. These reports date from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. They include:
On January 25, 1878, The Denison Daily News wrote that local farmer John Martin had reported seeing a large, dark, circular flying object resembling a balloon flying “at wonderful speed.”[17]
On November 17, 1882, a UFO was observed by astronomer Edward Walter Maunder of the Greenwich Royal Observatory and some other European astronomers. Maunder in The Observatory reported “a strange celestial visitor” that was "disc-shaped," "torpedo-shaped," "spindle-shaped," or "just like a Zeppelin" dirigible (as he described it in 1916).
On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles west of San Francisco, reported by Lt. Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet. Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and “soared” above the clouds, departing directly away from the earth after 2 to 3 minutes. The largest had an apparent size of about six suns.[18][19]
Drawing of E. W. Maunder's Nov. 17, 1882, "auroral beam" by astronomer Rand Capron, Guildown Observatory, Surrey, UK, who also observed it.On 5 August 1926, while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Nicholas Roerich reported that members of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed".[20]
In both the European and Japanese aerial theatres during World War II, “Foo-fighters” (balls of light and other shapes that followed aircraft) were reported by both Allied and Axis pilots.[21]
On February 25, 1942, the U.S. Army detected unidentified aircraft both visually and on radar over the Los Angeles, California region. No readily-apparent explanation was offered. The incident later became known as the Battle of Los Angeles, or the West coast air raid.[22]
In 1946, there were over 2000 reports of unidentified aircraft in the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece, then referred to as “Russian hail,” and later as “ghost rockets,” because it was thought that these mysterious objects were Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Over 200 were tracked on radar and deemed to be “real physical objects” by the Swedish military.[23]
Kenneth Arnold's sighting and the 1947 U.S. UFO wave
This shows the report Kenneth Arnold filed in 1947 about his UFO sighting.The post World War II UFO phase in the United States began with a reported sighting by American businessman Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 while flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, Washington. He reported seeing nine brilliantly bright objects flying across the face of Rainier towards nearby Mount Adams at “an incredible speed”, which he "calculated" as at least 1200 miles per hour by timing their travel between Rainier and Adams.[24]
This shows Kenneth Arnold holding a picture of a drawing of the crescent shaped UFO he saw in 1947.His sighting subsequently received significant media and public attention. Arnold would later say they “flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water” (it would ricochet) and also said they were “flat like a pie pan”, “shaped like saucers,” and “half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. ...they looked like a big flat disk.” (One, however, he would describe later as being almost crescent-shaped.) Arnold’s reported descriptions caught the media’s and the public’s fancy and gave rise to the terms flying saucer and flying disk.[25] Arnold’s sighting was followed in the next few weeks by hundreds of other reported sightings, mostly in the U.S., but in other countries as well.
Another case was a United Airlines crew sighting of nine more disc-like objects over Idaho on the evening of July 4.[26] At the time, this sighting was even more widely reported than Arnold’s and lent considerable credence to Arnold’s report. In fact, American UFO researcher Ted Bloecher, in his comprehensive review of newspaper reports, found a sudden surge upwards in sightings on July 4, peaking on July 6-8. Bloecher noted that for the next few days most American newspapers were filled with front-page stories of the new “flying saucers” or “flying discs.” Starting with official debunkery that began the night of July 8 with the Roswell UFO incident, reports rapidly tapered off, ending the first big U.S. UFO wave.
Over several years in the 1960s, Bloecher (aided by physicist James E. McDonald) discovered 853 flying disc sightings that year from 140 newspapers from Canada, Washington D.C, and every U.S. state save Montana. [27]
U.S. government and UFOs
Starting July 9, Army Air Force (AAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, which included Arnold’s and the United crew’s. The AAF used “all of its scientists” to determine whether or not “such a phenomenon could, in fact, occur.” The research was “being conducted with the thought that the flying objects might be a celestial phenomenon,” or that “they might be a foreign body mechanically devised and controlled.”[28] Three weeks later they concluded that, “This ‘flying saucer’ situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around.”[29]
A further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached the same conclusion, that “the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious,” that there were objects in the shape of a disc, metallic in appearance, and as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by “extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability,” genera
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