The invasion by flying saucers

In August 1947, statistician George Gallup noted that nine out of ten Americans had heard about the phenomenon. He was analyzing the first opinion survey on flying saucers. Kenneth Arnold, a salesman for firefighting equipment, saw the first one on June 24, as he was flying his plane close to Mount Rainier in Washington. The invasion begins. This summer, thousands of people are seen in the United States. There are 150 cases per day on July 6, 7, and 6.

Arnold's sighting was a month and a quarter after it happened. A third of Arnold's countrymen still don’t know what the objects are. Another third believes they are optical illusions, mirages, or the imagination. 15% believe they are secret weapons of their nation; one in ten thinks they are fraud-based; and 1% fear they might be Soviet weapons. Although aliens have been flying above the collective imagination for over a century, and strange things have been observed in the sky for many decades, there is no mention of them.

Illustration of the Moon's inhabitants, taken from the story of 'The Sun' in 1835. Library of Congress

August 1835

The New York newspaper, "The Sun", reported that John Herschel, an astronomer, discovered life on the Moon between August 25th and 31st 1835. He has been able to see satellite seas, rivers, and valleys that are populated by bisons, unicorns, and bipedal beavers. The serial is based on research published in a Scottish scientific magazine. It reaches its climax when the bat man's observations show him living happily in a paradise of "polished sapphire" or "some resplendent Blue stone." The story is over after six delivery.

The sales of "The Sun" rocketed and competitors don't hesitate to copy the story as is. They cite the Scottish magazine as a source. This magazine does not exist. Everything was invented by Richard Adams Locke, a journalist. The newspaper admits that it was a fraud 36 years later in its obituary. "Mr. Locke was responsible for the Moon hoax. It was the most successful scientific hoax published. According to the newspaper, the story was written with such precision and deft use technical phrases that it was accepted by ordinary readers. It also misled and baffled scientists to an amazing degree." February 18, 1871.

Giovanni Schiaparelli, 1891. Map of Mars channels. / E. C.

1877-1965

Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, sees 1877 a network a Mars canals. They are, for him, natural watercourses. He wrote that "it is not necessary to assume here the work of intelligence beings" in 1893. Percival Lowell, Percival's American colleague, thinks it is a matter of a planetary engineering effort to bring water to the middle latitudes from the poles. He defends this idea in three books published between 1908 and 1895. The belief is widely held.

The first alien invasion of the Martians takes place in the middle of channel fever. It is a novel by H.G. Wells was published in 1897. Ufologists pointed to Mars in the 1950s as the origin of saucers. NASA's Mariner 4 probe, which flew over Mars in 1965, did not see any alien bases or canals. Scientists have pointed out that the channels are the result of the human mind's inability to find patterns where none exist.

The mysterious airship that flew above Sacramento in November 1896. / The San Francisco Call

November 1896

A mysterious aircraft, or as the media called it, visits the United States fifty years before the arrival saucers. It is seen between November 1896 to May 1897. It is first seen in California, then Arkansas, Nebraska and Texas. Some people He speaks to his pilots, dressed in period attire, when they land to stock the pantry. Nobody knows the inventor of the balloon that has a propeller, spotlights and a basket, which boasts a flight capability far greater than the airships of the time. Overnight, the ship vanishes as it appeared in newspapers.

The majority of cases involve night lights, which witnesses and the media interpret as an aircraft. This is similar to what happened with flying saucers in 1947. They are likely stars or planets. There are also journalistic inventions, pranksters, and balloon and kite-flying pranksters. Strange things are still being seen in the skies of America and Europe after this wave.

"Will Marconi be able to listen to Mars?" The American press asked this question in 1922/. E.C.

August 1924

On August 23, and 24, 1924, radio operators from the US War Department participated in a monitoring Martian messages. David Todd, an Amherst University astronomer, promotes it. It coincides with a few days in which Mars and Earth are very close. The Navy Observatory scientist had previously worked with the Navy Observatory. He asks the military not to use the radio. Washington doesn't agree to the request, but it does participate in the operation. It's a failure. It is a failure.

This is not the first time that it has been attempted. Radio pioneers like Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi had already done it. In his Colorado Springs laboratory, the first to believe that signals from Mars had been received was Guglielmo Marconi in 1899. It is believed that the signal could have come from his rival or even from Jupiter. Marconi stated in 1919 that he had heard the Martians. However, he later retracts, suspecting that other radio experimenters broadcast the message.

Frame taken from the 1953 film version of 'The War of the Worlds,' by Byron Haskin.

October 1938

Tens of thousands of Americans were affected by a Martian attack during the broadcast of the radio version of "The War of the Worlds" on OrsonWelles' Mercury Theatre. The radio drama session was presented as a variety show, interrupted by links from the frontlines in the first interplanetary conflict. It has been described as a radio drama session that confuses CBS listeners who connect late or not. Some people can smell the gas, hear the shots and see the flames on the battlefield.

The media presents the competing radio station, as a threat, to magnify the terror of 'The War of the Worlds. The idea is further reinforced by Hadley Cantril (sociologist from Princeton University), who based his study on 135 interviews. Robert Bartholomew, a fellow socioologist, stated that the panic described by Cantril was exaggerated. In 1998, Orson Welles' radio broadcast showed that people can see things that aren't there when they are encouraged by the media.

According to Kenneth Arnold's pamphlet, the form of the "flying saucers" as seen by him. / E.C.

June 24, 1947

Kenneth Arnold, an East Oregonian reporter, tells them about the sighting. He describes a group of boomerang-shaped objects "flying erratically" - much like a saucer when thrown over water. The story finishes on the front page. A businessman saw nine saucer-shaped aircraft flying together at incredible speed. Although it isn't known who confused the mode of flight and the shapes of objects, the AP agency spreads the news around the world. Since then, visions of saucers and not boomerangs have been a constant companion.

They could be enemy devices, which the Pentagon fears. This is something it has ruled out since 1953. There are also some very bizarre journalistic inventions. One, for instance, reveals that the saucers were invented by wise Nazi refugees living in Francoist Spain. It is rare to believe in extraterrestrial origin. The saucers first appeared in cinemas in February 1949 and January 1950. They were created by human scientists. Experts who studied Arnold's case have concluded that he saw a flock pelicans.

In the 1951 movie "Ultimatum On Earth", Klaatu, an alien, steps out of his shiny flying saucer and lands in front of President Barack Obama.

1950

Donald Keyhoe was an ex-Marine pilot and author of science fiction, adventure stories and science fiction. He established the principles of the UFO creed in 1950. He concludes in his book "The flying saucers exist" that aliens from other planets have been watching Earth for at least two centuries. This observation has intensified since the 1945 atomic bomb blasts. The US government is aware of this surveillance and keeps it hidden from the public. The aliens are in control of the saucers, according to a report in True magazine and half a million copies of the book.

This belief is rapidly spreading and Robert Wise, a filmmaker, replaced Klaatu’s original ovoid spacetime ship with a saucer for the filming. Nobody has ever seen the crew members of any of these ships. In September 1951, an alien played by Michael Rennie arrives in Washington to warn humanity against using nuclear weapons. One year later, George Adamski, a MontePalomar hamburger chef, meets Orthon in the California desert. She conveys to her concern about the nuclear weapons to our neighbors. Adamski and his followers will be discredited by serious ufology. However, Orthon will show that extraterrestrials already exist and will in the coming decades meet more people, kidnap others, and even take part in assassinations.