The term "flying saucer", which is popularly called UFO, appeared back in 1947. It was invented by the media after the American pilot told about the objects he saw, which he considered "alien ships".
On July 8, 1947, the command of the US Army Air Force Base Roswell (New Mexico) announced the discovery of a "flying disc" in the desert. Then the media trumpeted to the whole world about the seizure of the "flying saucer" by the military, which was named after the description of the found object, compiled by the airbase's public relations officer Walter Hoth.
But the first recorded human encounter with a UFO occurred two weeks before the Roswell incident - June 24, 1947.
Then 32-year-old private jet pilot Kenneth Arnold noticed nine UFOs in the sky during a night flight from Chehalis to Yakima (Washington), outwardly also similar to flying saucers.
“I saw a chain of nine objects flying from north to south near Mount Rainier,” Arnold told reporters at the time.
At the time of the meeting with the "alien ships" the American plane was at an altitude of 2,800 meters, and the clock showed 3 am. Flying objects were in the pilot's field of view for about three minutes, and then disappeared. According to Arnold's calculations, UFOs moved at a speed of about 2 thousand kilometers per hour.
Initially, the eyewitness said that the objects he saw in the night sky resembled "cakes" in the shape of a crescent or boomerang, and later he added that UFOs were like "saucers sliding on water." This is how the term "flying saucers" was "born".