this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
-1 points (42.9% liked)
AskHistorians
1319 readers
22 users here now
QUESTIONS
- Be civil.
- Be specific.
- Historical topic must be from at least 20 years ago.
- Post questions in the title. Elaboration is for the text box.
RESPONSES
- Be civil.
- Provide comprehensive answers.
- Please provide primary and secondary sources upon good faith request. Tertiary sources, like Wikipedia, are not accepted.
askhistorians is a community for academic answers to questions about history. Polls, opinions, bigotry, grammar pedantry, and personal insults will be removed.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've been reading Demon Haunted World, and Sagan talks a lot about alien conspiracy theorists. He notes that virtually all of the early "sightings" have details that seem to stem from a specific interview with a private plane pilot, Kenneth Arnold, in 1947.
Supposedly, he described some unidentified flying objects that "flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." He was not saying they looked like a saucer, but reporters misquoted him as saying they looked like a flying saucer. The rest is history, suddenly people were reporting flying saucers all over the place.
But particularly, reports started springing up after WW2 near areas where the military was testing new flying contraptions. And it behooved the military to stoke the incredible conspiracies, because of course they want their tests to remain secret.