Alien spacecraft, phenomena from another dimension, ghosts, demons of satan, a trick of light - whatever you might believe UFOs to be, they have a long history.Don is joined by Greg Eghgian for this episode. Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University, Greg is the author of 'After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon'. Together with Don, he explores the origins of the 'flying saucer', the end of the stigma against researching UFOs, and much more.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 MediaAmerican History Hit is a History Hit podcast.
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The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group conducts exercises about 100 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego. It's November 14, 2004, and the strike group has deployed a number of F-A-18 Super Hornets, high-performance twin-engine tactical aircraft, onboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton, the Radio Crackles. It has been tracking anomalous aerial vehicles on its advanced radar for weeks,
They need someone now to go out for a closer look. This thing they've observed has been doing some crazy maneuvers. At one point, it seems to have descended 80,000 feet in less than a second. Two planes piloted by Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich are dispatched to check it out. Each aircraft has a weapons systems officer on board in the rear seat.
As these four men in their two fighter jets approach the location, they are confounded by what they see. Below them is a white oblong object. Fravor later describes it looking like a tic-tac mint. About the same size as the planes, but with no markings, exhaust plume, or even wings, the object seems to mirror Fravor's movements.
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Dear listeners, it's Don Wildman. And on today's episode of American History Hit, we're venturing beyond the bland borders of doubt and disbelief into a mystic realm of intrigue and insight to confront that which skeptics claim cannot exist. Even while year upon year, evidence seems to stack up to the contrary.
As encounters grow ever closer and private acceptance goes public, we have gradually become a nation that embraces the possible, some say probable, idea that alien visitation has occurred here on Earth. A shift a long time coming, considering all that's been out there in the distant and recent past, and what we can suppose is out there even now. UFOs exist.
Flying objects that cannot be identified. The military admits to it. But by that simple definition, the phenomenon is part of our reality, documented in so many startling videos and captured images.
But what they are, and where they're from, and by what weird means they are somehow propelled through the air, well, those are still the confounding questions, the answers to which would challenge everything we know and believe about life on Earth and our existence in the cosmos. Which begs the other question, do we really want to know?
Our guest today does, and that's why he's authored a major book on the subject, released this past summer from Oxford University Press, a comprehensive account of UFO sightings and close encounters around the world, entitled After the Flying Saucers Came, A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. Its author is a professor of history and bioethics at Penn State University. Hello, Greg Agigian.
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