Page 6 - Visitors from Outer Space

Saying Hello

America’s first recorded UFO sighting dates back to

1639. John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, wrote about it. He said that three men in a

boat at night had reported seeing a light in the sky. The

light moved back and forth over a distance of around
2 miles (3.2 km). Other people saw it too. When the

lights faded, the men found themselves 1 mile (1.6 km)
upstream. They had no idea how they had gotten there.

In the late 1940s, the U.S. government started becoming

concerned about all the UFO reports they were
receiving. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek was asked to

review the sightings. By the 1960s, he was known as the
world’s expert on UFOs.

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