Just before midnight on July 19, 1952, a Washington National Airport air traffic controller spotted seven unusual objects on radar—first hovering about 15 miles south-southwest of the city, later floating above the White House and the Capitol. That same night, an airman at Andrews Air Force Base saw an “object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail.” The pilot of a departing commercial flight spotted six “white, tailless, fast-moving lights.” The mysterious objects disappeared from radar upon the arrival of two Air Force jets, then reappeared when the jets left. The following weekend, more inexplicable lights glimmered over DC, prompting the Air Force to send jets after the objects. Once again, the anomalies vanished.
In a press conference that week, Air Force Chief of Intelligence Major General John Samford attributed the bizarre radar activity to a temperature inversion. Project Blue Book—the Air Force’s UFO investigation program—deemed this theory inadequate. The CIA formed a study group to analyze the sightings, and by the following year, had concluded that UFOs were not a viable national security threat.
More than 70 years later, officials still can’t explain what actually happened. However, if you’re among the majority of Americans who currently believe in intelligent life beyond Earth, take heart: on Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the subject of UAPs—“unidentified anomalous phenomena,” an increasingly popular term to describe these airborne mysteries.
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