This morning I came across a great interview with Penn State Professor of History and Bioethics Greg Eghigian about his research into the history of reported UFO sightings around the world. Eghigian has always been fascinated with the subject, and after being challenged by a colleague and spending a summer at home due to illness, he began to research historical accounts. The bulk of that research became the basis for his book, "After The Flying Saucers Came."
In the interview with the BBC Eghigian explained that what we think we know about the subject isn't necessarily true.
When asked about whether the UFO phenomena begam with Roswell, Eghigian had this to say:
"No, it doesn't begin with Roswell! In fact, Roswell is a blip, a really minor blip. It's a very tiny footnote.
When you look at it in the wider perspective, it actually starts a little earlier than that with a private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold, who's flying around Washington State, around Mount Rainier, looking for a crashed plane.
And he sees these strange pan-shaped objects flying at high speeds.
He comes back, lands on the ground and tells people he’s seen some weird stuff, and reports it to the authorities and also the media.
And the media starts asking him questions about it. They ask him, how did these things fly? How would you describe it?
He said they flew like a saucer might if you skipped it over water.
And a very enterprising journalist knew a headline when they saw one and called them flying saucers.
Within 6 weeks, a survey said 9 out of 10 Americans had heard the term flying saucer.
Roswell pops up as a story for about 2 days and then disappears and is never heard of again, until you get into the late 1970s and early 80s."
You can read the rest of the interview over at BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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In the summer of 1947, a private pilot flying over the state of Washington saw what he described as several pie pan-shaped aircraft traveling in formation at remarkably high speed. Within days, journalists began referring to the objects as "flying saucers." Over the course of that summer, Americans reported seeing them in the skies overhead. News quickly spread, and within a few years, flying saucers were being spotted across the world. The question on everyone's mind was, what were they? Some new super weapon in the Cold War? Strange weather patterns? Optical illusions? Or perhaps it was all a case of mass hysteria? Some, however, concluded they could only be one thing: spacecrafts built and piloted by extraterrestrials. The age of the unidentified flying object, the UFO, had arrived.
Greg Eghigian tells the story of the world's fascination with UFOs and the prospect that they were the work of visitors from outer space. While accounts of great wonders in the sky date back to antiquity, reports of UFOs took place against the unique backdrop of the Cold War and space age, giving rise to disputed government inquiries, breathtaking news stories, and single-minded sleuths. After the Flying Saucers Came traces how a seemingly isolated incident sparked an international drama involving shady figures, questionable evidence, suspicions of conspiracy, hoaxes, new religions, scandals, unsettling alien encounters, debunkers, and celebrities. It examines how descriptions, theories, and debates about unidentified flying objects and alien abduction changed over time and how they appeared in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Russia. And it explores the impact UFOs have had on our understanding of space, science, technology, and ourselves up through the present day.
Replete with stories of the people who have made up the ufology community, the military and defense units that investigate them, the scientists and psychologists who have researched these unexplained encounters, and the many novels, movies, TV shows, and websites that have explored these phenomena, After the Flying Saucers Came speaks to believers and skeptics alike.
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