adiyansyah

Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a Song Chinese
government scholar-official and prolific
polymath inventor and scholar, wrote a vivid
passage in hisDream 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 shine a blinding light
from its interior (from an object shaped like a
pearl) that would cast shadows from trees for
tenmiles in radius, and was able to take off at
tremendous speeds.[16]
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." Martin also said it appeared
to be about the size of a saucer, the first
known use of the word "saucer" in association
with a UFO.[17]
On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by
three crew members on theUSS 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 inechelon formation that
approached beneath the cloud layer, then
changed course and "soared" above the
clouds, departing directly away from the earth
after two to three minutes. The largest had an
apparent size of about six suns.[18]
1916 and 1926: The three oldest known pilot
UFO sightings, of 1305 cataloged byNARCAP.
On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochford
reported a row of lights, like lighted windows
on a railway carriage, that rose and
disappeared. In January 1926, a pilot reported
six "flying manhole covers" betweenWichita,
Kansas and Colorado Springs, Colorado. In late
September 1926, an airmail pilot over Nevada
was forced to land by a huge, wingless
cylindrical object.[19]
On August 5, 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 the sun, like a huge
oval moving at great speed. Crossing our
camp the thing changed in its direction from
south to southwest. And we saw how it
disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even
had time to take our field glasses and saw quite
distinctly an oval form with shiny surface, one
side of which was brilliant from the sun.” [20]
Another description by Roerich was, "...A
shiny body flying from north to south. Field
glasses are at hand. It is a huge body. One side
glows in the sun. It is oval in shape. Then it
somehow turns in another direction and
disappears in the southwest." [21]
In the Pacific and European theatres during
World War II, "Foo-fighters" (metallic spheres,
balls of light and other shapes that followed
aircraft) were reported and on occasion
photographed by Allied and Axis pilots. Some
proposed Allied explanations at the time
includedSt. Elmo's Fire, the planet Venus,
hallucinations from oxygen deprivation, or
German secret weapon.[22][23]
On February 25, 1942, U.S. Army observers
reported unidentified aircraft both visually and
on radar over theLos Angeles, California
region. Antiaircraft artillery was fired at what
was presumed to be Japanese planes. No
readily apparent explanation was offered,
though some officials dismissed the reports of
aircraft as being triggered by anxieties over
expected Japanese air attacks on California.
However, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C.
Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson
insisted real aircraft were involved. The incident
later became known as theBattle of Los
Angeles, or the West coast air raid.
In 1946, there were over 2000 reports,
collected primarily by the Swedish military, of
unidentified aerial objects 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 possibly Russian
tests of captured GermanV1 or V2 rockets.
Although most were thought to be natural
phenomena like meteors, over 200 were
tracked on radar and deemed to be "real
physical objects" by the Swedish military. In a
1948top secret document, the Swedish
military told the USAF Europe in 1948 that
some of their investigators believed them to be
extraterrestrial in origin.
The Kenneth Arnold sightings
Main article: Kenneth Arnold Unidentified Flying
Object Sighting
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 famous sighting by American
businessmanKenneth 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.
This shows Kenneth Arnold holding a picture of a
drawing of the crescent shaped UFO he saw in
1947.
Although there were other 1947 U.S. sightings of
similar objects that preceded this, it was Arnold's
sighting that first received significant media
attention and captured the public's imagination.
Arnold described what he saw as being "flat like a
pie pan", "shaped like saucers and were so thin I
could barely see them… ", "half-moon shaped,
oval in front and convex in the rear. … they
looked like a big flat disk" (see Arnold's drawing at
right), and flew "like a saucer would if you
skipped it across the water". (One of the objects,
however, he would describe later as crescent-
shaped, as shown in illustration at left.) Arnold’s
descriptions were widely reported and within a
few days gave rise to the termsflying saucer
and flying disk.[24] 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. After reports of the
Arnold sighting hit the media, other cases began
to be reported in increasing numbers. In one
instance aUnited Airlines crew sighting of nine
more disc-like objects over Idaho on the evening
of July 4. At the time, this sighting was even
more widely reported than Arnold’s and lent
considerable credence to Arnold’s report.[25]
American UFO researcher Ted Bloecher, in his
comprehensive review of newspaper reports
(including cases that preceded Arnold's), 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". Speculation as to what
the flying saucers were was rampant in the
newspapers. Theories ranged from
hallucinations,mass hysteria, optical illusions,
hoaxes, reflections off airplanes, unusual
atmospheric conditions, and weather balloons to
byproducts of atomic testing or U.S./Russian
secret weapons, to even more esoteric
interdimensional or interplanetary visitors.
Reports began to rapidly tail off after July 8,[26]
when officials began issuing press statements on
theRoswell UFO incident, in which they explained
debris found on the ground by a rancher as
being that of a weather balloon.[27]
Over several years in the 1960s, Bloecher (aided
by physicistJames E. McDonald) discovered 853
flying disc sightings that year from 140
newspapers from Canada, Washington D.C, and
every U.S. state except Montana.[