apers all
over the United States carried the first flying saucer report. The
story told how nine very bright, disk-shaped objects were seen by
Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his
private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington. With
journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold's description of the
individual motion of each of the objects--like "a saucer skipping
across water"--into "flying saucer," a name for the objects
themselves. In the eight years that have passed since Arnold's
memorable sighting, the term has become so common that it is now in
Webster's Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting the term "flying saucer" was
used to describe all disk-shaped objects that were seen flashing
through the sky at fantastic speeds. Before long, reports were made
of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying
saucers. Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in
the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.

Thus a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a
sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color. Performance-wise,
flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90-
degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.

Obviously the term "flying saucer" is misleading when applied to
objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason
the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name:
unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.

Officially the military uses the term "flying saucer" on only two
occasions. First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who
are unacquainted with the term "UFO": "UFO--you know--flying
saucers." And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule,
as when it is observed, "He says he saw a flying saucer."

This second form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons
who positively know that all UFO's are nonsense. Fortunately, for the
sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this
knowing category are constantly dwindling. One by one these people
drop out, starting with the instant they see their first UFO.

Some weeks after the first UFO was seen on June 24, 1947, the Air
Force established a project to investigate and analyze all UFO
reports. The attitude toward this task varied from a state of near
pani