Fort Yukon and JAL Flight 1628
On 17 November 1986 a Japan Airlines cargo 747 was over Alaska when the crew saw two small objects alongside and then — in the description of Captain Kenju Terauchi — something far larger, "the size of two aircraft carriers". The escort lasted about fifty minutes. The controller at Anchorage saw an extra return beside the aircraft on radar; military radar did not confirm it. The Federal Aviation Administration investigated and concluded that the return was an artefact and that what was seen was probably Jupiter and Mars, both low on the horizon that night. Terauchi rejected the explanation and was moved to a ground job.
Rainier and Kenneth Arnold's Nine Objects
On 24 June 1947 Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot, was flying along the Cascades when he saw nine objects strung out near the slope of Mount Rainier, moving at enormous speed. On landing he described their motion to a reporter: like a saucer skipped across water. The paper shortened that to "flying saucers", and the phrase has existed ever since. Arnold himself insisted the objects were not round but crescent-shaped, and that the press had described the movement rather than the shape. Nobody heard the correction. The sighting is generally taken as the start of the whole modern subject: before it, reports of strange things in the sky were occasional; after it, they came in floods.
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