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The modern interest in UFOs started with a claimed sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24 1947, near Mount Rainier, Washington. Though the UFOs he saw were not saucer-shaped, he described their movements as being similar to that of a saucer skipping over water, hence the origin of the term flying saucer. Arnold's claims received significant mainstream attention.
Since the mid-twentieth century, UFOs have been the subject of thousands of books, motion pictures, songs, documentaries and other media, and of numerous hoaxes. UFO topics were amongst the most popular on early computer Bulletin board systems, and millions of people have some degree of interest in the subject.
There have been studies of UFOs and UFO enthusiast subcultures from a folklore or anthropological perspective.
A 1996 Gallup poll shows that 71% of the U.S. population believes that the Government is covering up some information about UFOs.
The number of different shapes, sizes and configurations of claimed UFOs has been large, with detailed descriptions of chevrons, equilateral triangles, spheres, domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs and cylinders being prevalent. Skeptics argue this diversity of shapes, size and configurations points to a socio-psychological explanation. Professed experiencers and believers reply that the volume of highly detailed sightings reported by witnesses from commercial airline pilots to United States presidents possesses strong consistency and cannot be explained away as mundane phenomena (weather balloons, aircraft, Venus), arguing for the non-conventional interpretation.
The nine objects Kenneth Arnold said he saw were not saucer-shaped. Drawings showed something rather boomerangA boomerang is a curved, usually wooden, device which is thrown. A boomerang spins as it flies through the air, and can travel long distances. A boomerang is designed to, when thrown correctly, fly a curved path to return to the person who threw it. To bo or crescentA crescent is the shape you get if you cut out of a circle another circle of roughly the same size, but offset to one side. You might also describe it as the shape the lit side of a sphere takes on if, in respect to the viewer, the light source is behind shaped: more resembling a flying wingA flying wing is a type of aircraft design with no tail, one in which the majority of the fuselage is inside a thickened wing. Since a wing is necessary for any aircraft, removing everything else theoretically results in a design with the lowest possible style aircraft. However, he described their movement as a kind of skipping, like a saucer skimmed over water. Press reports picked up the "like a saucer" phrase, and reported it as a "flying saucer".
George AdamskiGeorge Adamski ( April 17, 1891 February 26, 1965) was a Polish-born American, one of the first people to publicly claim to have seen and photographed UFOs, met aliens and to have gone on flights with them. He wrote several books relating to his claims, i contributed to the popularity of this term with his books, such as Flying Saucers Have Landed ( 19531953 is a common year starting on Thursday (click on link for the calendar). Events January events January 7 President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. January 13 Marshal Josip Broz Tito chosen President of Yugosl), despite that book having been based on fiction but presented as fact.