June 24, 1947: They Came From … Outer Space?

1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington’s Mount Rainier. It’s the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold’s description of what he saw, leads the press to coin the term flying saucer.

Arnold was an experienced pilot with more than 9,000 hours of flying time. He had diverted from his flight plan – Chehalis to Yakima, Washington – to search for a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane reported down in the Cascades near the southwest slope of Mount Rainier. A sweep of the area revealed nothing, and Arnold resumed his original course.

As Arnold recalled, the afternoon was crystal clear, and he was cruising at an altitude of 9,200 feet. A minute or two after noting a DC-4 about 15 miles behind and to the left of him, he was startled by something bright reflecting off his plane. At first he thought he had nearly hit another aircraft but as he looked off in the direction the light had come from, he saw nine “peculiar-looking” aircraft flying rapidly in formation toward Mount Rainier.

As these strange, tailless craft flew between his plane and Mount Rainier and then off toward distant Mount Adams, Arnold noted their remarkable speed – he later calculated that they were moving at around 1,700 mph – and said he got a pretty good look at their black silhouettes outlined against Rainier’s snowy peak. He later described them as saucer-like disks … something the gentlemen of the press glommed on to very quickly.