From Roswell Incident to the Kenneth Arnold case, here are some popular and intriguing claims about UFO sightings.
These cases will make you think, are we alone in the universe?
Representative image of UFOs.
Representative image of UFOs.
(Photograph:Others)
Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting
On June 24, aviator Kenneth Arnold, also a businessman and politician wrote about a UFO. It is generally considered to be the first widely reported UFO in the United States. The famous Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting occurred in 1947.
Arnold had claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier. According to him, the speed of those objects is estimated at a minimum of 1,200 miles an hour.
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Roswell incident
July 2 is marked after the famous Roswell incident in 1947 — a supposed UFO crash. United States Army Air Forces officers from Roswell Army Air Field recovered balloon debris from a ranch near Corona, New Mexico in 1947. Decades later, the conspiracy theories suggest that the debris involved a flying saucer and the US government covered up the truth.
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Belgian UFO wave
From the year 1989 to 1990, in over five months, around 13,500 people claimed that they have witnessed large, silent, low-flying black triangles. And over 2,600 people filed written statements.
Belgium's military allegedly investigated such incidents but sceptics, cited by media reports, said that they were helicopters or mass delusions caused by eating chips with mayonnaise.
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Foo fighter
During World War II, Allied aircraft pilots claimed that they often spot small metallic spheres and colourful balls of light.
Such uncommon aerial phenomena were occasionally photographed by bomber crews during World War II. The objects were seen in skies over both the European and Pacific theatres of operations.
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Ghost rockets
The so-called ghost rockets were spotted mostly in Scandinavia, but also in some other European countries. The Swedish Defense Staff expressed concerns over numerous UFO sightings that were reported over Scandinavia.
As per media reports, ghost rockets were rocket/missile-shaped UFOs sightings in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries like Finland.
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Westall encounter
In 1966, the sighting of a UFO was reported by hundreds of people. As per reports, more than 200 students and teachers at two Melbourne schools saw a flying saucer descend into a grass field. They also claimed that the object later ascend over a local suburb.
Although there are no proofs or pictures, but witnesses of "The Clayton Incident" still gather for reunions.
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Levelland case
In and around the small town of Levelland, Texas, claims were made regarding sighting a UFO. Some motorists said that their engines were automatically stalled when they encountered a glowing, egg-shaped object. They also claimed that their vehicles restarted after the object flew past.
Although, old media reports stated that the US Air Force and UFO sceptics had denounced the sightings. They described the incident as being caused by either ball lightning or a severe electrical storm.
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Phoenix lights
A V-shaped "otherworldly" craft was spotted by thousands of people in the skies over Arizona. The craft, with five spherical lights, was seen several city blocks across.
People saw the object between 19:30 and 22:30 MST in a space of about 300 miles - from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson.
Reports have stated that there were two distinct events involved in the incident; first a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and second, a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area.
Later, the US Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft.
(Photograph:Others)
UFO
This is a screengrab obtained in April 2020. The credit of the image is US defence department that shows part of an unclassified video taken by navy pilots showing interactions with unidentified aerial phenomena.
"Since the early 2000s we have seen an increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft or objects in military-controlled training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace," Scott Bray, deputy director of Naval Intelligence, told a House security panel in May 2022.
Bray attributed the rise to efforts by the US military to "destigmatise the act of reporting sights and encounters" as well as to technological advances. However, he said the Pentagon had detected nothing "that would suggest it's anything non-terrestrial in origin" behind these phenomena.