the.com/flying saucer
Proof that the night sky is just one bad light source away from an alien invasion.
means A disc-shaped unidentified flying object, especially one popularly believed to be an alien spacecraft.
from The term took off in 1947 after pilot Kenneth Arnold described mysterious objects he saw near Mount Rainier as moving 'like a saucer if you skip it across water' — describing their motion, not their shape. Newspapers flattened his simile into a shape, and 'flying saucer' stuck, launching decades of UFO lore from what was essentially a journalist's shorthand.
- coined by
- a 1947 pilot describing erratic motion, not shape
- media did rest
- press ran with saucer shape instead of motion
- most sightings
- turn out to be planets, weather balloons, or drones
- peak era
- cold war paranoia fueled decades of reported sightings