Mark Yasuda · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

UFO sightingGreen

Maury Island and the First Hoax

added01 September 2026

In June 1947, days before Kenneth Arnold's flight, a harbour patrolman named Harold Dahl claimed that six doughnut-shaped objects over this island in Puget Sound had dropped a mass of hot slag, killing his dog and injuring his son. He also described a man in black who advised him to say nothing. Arnold was hired to investigate; two Air Force officers collected samples of the slag and died when their bomber crashed on the way back. The story acquired a reputation as the first dark one in the subject. A few weeks later Dahl and his partner admitted to the FBI that they had invented the whole thing to sell a magazine article, and that the slag was ordinary smelter waste. The confession is far less well known than the story.

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47.37694, -122.42972

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UFO sightingYellow

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