The existence of unidentified flying objects has been debated for decades as multiple sightings have been reported from around the world.
While many of these sightings have not been officially verified, witnesses have sworn by what they have seen.
Here’s a brief look at the history of alien sightings over the last century...
The first widely publicised UFO sighting came in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see nine flying objects near Mount Rainier in Washington.
The term “flying saucer” was then coined after the first sighting, when Arnold stated that the objects looked “like saucers skipping on water.”
"Flying saucer" is still often used today as a term for UFOs. This sighting was considered the first of "the Modern UFO era."
This sighting lead to the creation of the first public United States Air Force studies of UFO's known as Project Sign.
By the end of 1948, Project Sign was then succeeded by the short-lived Project Grudge before eventually formally ending at the end of 1949.
On August 25, 1951, three professors of science from Texas Tech saw a semicircle of lights flying overhead at high speed in Lubbock, Texas in an event that would later become known as the "Lubbock Lights".
There were multiple reports the same phenomenon happening in Lubbock but after the initial investigation the Air Force refrained from providing any details regarding an explanation for the occurence.
The Lubbock Lights event occurred just before the US Government's longest investigation into UFO sightings. The investigation was called Project Blue Book and analyzed over 12,000 sightings and events between 1952 and 1969.
In 1973 J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked as an advisor for Project Blue Book, established the Center for UFO Studies after concluding there was enough evidence to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial beings.
Hynek later developed the "Close Encounter" classification system that became famous after being referenced in the 1977 Steven Spielberg film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.
In 2019, the US Department of Defense released footage of an unidentified flying object after it declassified footage shot between the summer of 2014 and March 2015.
