UFOs are not something new to us. For millennia, ancient civilizations like Egypt, Greece, Rome and Sumeria have been depicting disk-like objects and unusual flying objects in their respective art and literature.
In the middle of the 2oth century, right around the “race to space era”, during which newly developed high-tech aircraft and space rockets were being produced (often in secret), a modern era of UFOs took the world by storm with various sightings and alien abductions reported from around the globe. Here are 4 most popular alien sightings that shook the world.
5) Kenneth Arnold, 1947
A pilot named Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen nine glowing blue objects that flew past by him in a V-formation while he was flying his aircraft near Washington’s Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947. Arnold thought the unidentified flying objects were some sort of new military aircraft but the government denied having any test flights done during that day. After describing the UFOs’ motion as similar to that of “a saucer if you skip it across water”, the media immediately coined the now ubiquitous term “flying saucer”. Although the government denied having any involvement and even claimed that Arnold was just probably hallucinating, the UFO craze had set in, and just a couple of weeks later, the infamous Roswell sighting would keep the mania alive.
4) Roswell, 1947
Although it is considered as the mother of all UFO sightings, nobody has actually ever seen an alien aircraft hovering or crashing over Roswell. The UFO rumor actually started when rancher William Brazel found mysterious debris all over his New Mexico ranch which include metallic rods, bizarre-looking paper scraps and chunks of plastic. After he reported the wreckage to the authorities, Brazel later revealed that it was a group of soldiers from a neighboring Roswell air force base who were sent to fetch the wreckage. Various newspapers later claimed that a “flying saucer” had crashed into Roswell and that the government was covering it up by maintaining that it was only a downed weather balloon. Ever since that fateful day, countless conspiracy theorists have been hard at work at coming up with “evidences” that prove that the wreckage was extraterrestrial.
3) Lubbock Lights, 1951
On the night of August 25, 1951, three science professors were enjoying an evening in one of the professor’s backyard when they allegedly witnessed an unusual formation of lights flying above them at a really high speed. Over the next couple of days, numerous reports started emerging from all over town. One college freshman named Carl Hart Jr. even managed to take a picture of the mysterious lights, which was featured in various newspapers as well as the popular American magazine Life.
2) Levelland, 1957
In 1957, dozens of Levelland citizens reported seeing a fast-moving, bright flash of light that caused their automobiles’ engines to die as well as cut out the lights. A UFO research group created by the Air Force was assigned to investigate the phenomenon. According to the research group, the UFO was probably a ball of lightning or an electrical storm which explains all the mechanical malfunctions.
1) The Belgium Wave, 1989-90
On November 1989, Belgium locals reported seeing a huge, triangle-shaped flying object hovering in the sky. A few months later, sightings of multiple objects were confirmed by military radar stations. The government sent out two F-16 fighter jets to check on the UFOs and according to the pilots, they could not see anything out of the ordinary up there but their radars however were able to lock-on to some unseen flying object. An estimate of 13,000 people were said to have witnessed the strange phenomenon, making the “Belgium Wave” one of the widely experienced UFO sightings in the history of the world.
