List of reported UFO sightings

This is a list of notable reported sightings of unidentified flying objects some of which include related claims of close encounters of the second or third kind or alien abduction. UFOs are generally considered to include any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained. UFOs have been referred to using a range of terms including the more specific "flying saucer" and the more general term "unidentified anomalous phenomena". "UAP" is sometimes used to avoid cultural associations with UFO conspiracy theories.
Although often viewed as abnormal, UFO sightings are reported frequently. During the United States' initial 1947 wave, over 800 sightings were reported in the news. The British Ministry of Defence receives hundreds of reports each year. In Brazil, pilots alone report dozens of annual sightings. A small portion of reported sightings have lasting cultural significance, interpreted through the cultural and technological expectations of the time.

Antiquity

Date	Name	Location	Description
c. 1450 BC	Thutmose III Jebel Barkal Stele	AfricaAncient Egypt; Jebel Barkal, Lower Egypt	After a military campaign in Nubia, Thutmose III had a stele erected at the Temple of Amun, beneath the Jebel Barkal outcropping. The stele describes how "a star came down" to set fire to Thutmose's adversaries. This has been cited by ufologists via the purported Tulli Papyrus, likely a fraud. This alleged translation—published in issue 41 of the Fortean Society's magazine Doubt—used such Fortean tropes as "circles of fire" and fish that "fell down from the sky".
	Ships in the sky	EuropeRoman Republic; Italia	During the build-up to the Second Punic War, Livy recorded prodigies in the winter sky, including navium speciem de caelo adfulsisse.
	Spark from a falling star	AsiaRoman Republic; Asia	According to Pliny the Elder, a spark fell from a star and grew as it descended until it appeared to be the size of the Moon. It then ascended and transformed into a torch. Astronomer Richard Stothers interpreted the report as a description of a bolide.
	Flame-like wine-jars from the sky	AsiaRoman Republic; Phrygia, Asia	According to Plutarch, a Roman army commanded by Lucullus was about to begin a battle with Mithridates VI of Pontus when "the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies". Plutarch reports the shape of the object as like a wine-jar.
AD 65	Sky army	AsiaRoman Empire; Judaea	Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus reported chariots "hurtling through the clouds" prior to the First Jewish–Roman War.
AD 196	Angel hair	EuropeRoman Empire; Rome, Italia	Historian Cassius Dio described a "fine rain resembling silver descended from a clear sky upon the Forum of Augustus." He wrote that he was able to plate some of his bronze coins, but four days later, the silvery coating was gone.

8th–17th centuries

Date	Name	Location	Description
AD c. 740	Air ship of Clonmacnoise	EuropeIreland; Teltown in County Meath, and Clonmacnoise in County Offaly	Several sets of Irish annals, those of Ulster, Tigernach, Clonmacnoise, and the Four Masters, have entries to the effect that "ships with their crews were seen in the air".
1561-04-14	1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg	EuropeHoly Roman Empire; Nuremberg, Bavaria	Residents of Nuremberg described an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of "something like a black spear, very long and thick". A broadsheet recorded that witness accounts of hundreds of spheres, cylinders and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.
1566-08-07	1566 celestial phenomenon over Basel	EuropeSwitzerland; Basel, Basel	A broadsheet published in 1566 depicted numerous spherical objects appearing out of the Sun. The event was recorded and depicted by Samuel Coccius, "a student of the Holy Scripture and of the free arts, at Basel".
1609-09-22	Gwanghaegun period UFO Turmoil	AsiaJoseon ; Gangwon Province	In 1609, multiple witnesses in Goseong, Wonju Gangneung, Chuncheon County and Yangyang County described a Halo or washbowl that was divided in two in the sky.

19th century

Date	Name	Location	Description
1883-08-12	Bonilla observation	North AmericaMexico; Zacatecas Observatory, Zacatecas	The astronomer José Bonilla photographed hundreds of dark objects crossing the Sun while observing sunspot activity at Zacatecas Observatory. Bonilla published an account of the event three years later in L'Astronomie.
1896-11-17 to 1897-04-23	Mystery airships	North AmericaUnited States	Newspapers across California, and later other states, especially the Midwest, printed reports of strange airships and lights. Common elements of the descriptions included bright lights, cigar-shaped bodies, movable wings and a metallic hull.
1897-04-17	Aurora, Texas, UFO incident	North AmericaUnited States; Aurora, Texas	Local correspondent S. E. Hayden reported the crash of an airship piloted by an alien. According to Hayden, the pilot was buried in the local cemetery. Residents of Aurora embrace the story without taking it seriously.

20th century

1900–1949

Date	Name	Location	Description
1904-02-28	USS Supply	North Pacific; about 300 miles from California	Three objects "rather bright red" color with geometrical formation flight pattern "in-line" and "echelon"; the objects changed course and flightpath changed from the observed horizontal to angularly upwards. The duration of reported event was stated as 2 minutes plus.
1907	Mihal Grameno UFO	EuropeOttoman Empire; Albania	"One night, while the fighters of Çerçiz were stationed at the top of a high mountain, a shiny object flew in front of us, stood suspended in the air for several minutes, and then disappeared."
1909	New Zealand airship sightings	OceaniaNew Zealand; Otago	Moving and whirring lights were reported in the sky around Otago. In the following months, many sightings were reported across New Zealand with varying descriptions of the craft and crew.
1917-08-13, 1917-09-13, 1917-10-13	Miracle of the Sun	EuropePortugal; Fátima, Santarém District	Thousands of people gathered in Fátima based on reported Marian apparitions and claimed to see bizarre solar activity. Catholic bishop José Alves Correia da Silva declared the miracle "worthy of belief" on 13 October 1930, and the primarily Catholic witnesses described the event in religious terms. Despite the many photographers present in the crowd, no unusual photo of the Sun was captured. Later, Jacques Vallée, Joaquim Fernandes and Fina d'Armada would interpret it as a mass UFO sighting.
	Nicholas Roerich UFO sighting	AsiaTibet	During his Asian expedition, Russian theosophist Nicholas Roerich reported an oval in the sky above his caravan, which was later interpreted as a "flying saucer" by Roerich's Russian followers.
1933-06-01	Frank Smythe UFO sighting	AsiaChina–Nepal border; Mount Everest in the Himalayas	During the 1933 Mount Everest expedition, Smythe witnessed two spots hovering and pulsating in the sky.
	Foo fighters	Over World War II theaters	During World War II, allied fighter pilots above Europe reported colorful balls of light following their aircraft at high speeds.
	Cape Girardeau UFO legend	North AmericaUnited States; Cape Girardeau, Missouri	A local legend gained wider attention in the 1980s when resident Charlotte Mann claimed in interviews that her father, Reverend William Huffman of the Red Star Baptist Church, had administered last rites for the dying crew of a crashed flying saucer.
1942-02-24	Battle of Los Angeles	North AmericaUnited States; Los Angeles, California	Just months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. radar stations picked up an unidentified aerial object in the early morning. For several hours, anti-aircraft artillery fired thousands of rounds, and the LA Times reported that “the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano."
1942-08-29	Army Air Corps Flying School	near Flying School, Columbus, Missouri	Control tower operator observes two reddish colored round objects descend-hover-accelerate away
1944-08-10	468th Bomb Group	20–30 minutes airflight time from Palembang, Sumatra	After midnight, returning from a bombing mission at an altitude of 14000 feet, speed "about 210 mph": 500 yards from the starboard an object appeared which the pilot estimated at the distance viewed was "probably 5-6 feet in diameter" - "intense red or orange" color - throbbed or vibrated constantly. The object followed the bomber for about 8 minutes while the pilot attempted evasive manoeuvres at the same 500 yard distance. The object flew "up" and away at a "90 degree" angle "accelerating rapidly".
1945	Trinity UFO Case	North AmericaUnited States; New Mexico	In 2003, two men began telling conflicting accounts of an avocado-shaped craft piloted by insectoid aliens crashing at the site of the first atomic bomb detonation. Despite a lack of evidence or internal consistency, the case was cited in the UFO investigation section of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023.
1946	The Ghost Rockets	EuropeScandinavia and other parts of Europe	Thousands of UFO sightings were reported over Europe. Due in part to concerns that foreign governments were testing recovered experimental German technology, the Swedish and Greek governments investigated the reports separately.
1946-05-18	Ängelholm UFO memorial	EuropeSweden; Ängelholm, Kristianstads County	Swedish entrepreneur Gösta Carlsson, attributed his success to a 1946 UFO encounter, that he commemorated with a concrete monument. Independent investigations did not verify his account.
1947-06-24	Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting	North AmericaUnited States; North of Mount Rainier, Washington	Private pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier when he reported seeing a group of reflective craft moving at high speeds and flashing in the Sun like mirrors. Bill Bequette of the East Oregonian, who first interviewed Arnold, summarized the sighting as, "nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation." This introduced the term flying saucers, and Arnold's sighting sparked an explosion of UFO reports around the country.
	1947 flying disc craze	North AmericaUnited States; Washington and other states	After the Kenneth Arnold sighting was reported in the news, over 800 similar sightings were reported throughout 1947.
1947-07-04	Flight 105 UFO sighting	North AmericaUnited States; En route from Boise, Idaho to Pendleton, Oregon	A United Airlines crew including Captain Emil Smith, co-pilot Ralph Stephens, and flight attendant Marty Morrow witnessed nine unidentified objects. Believing them to be aircraft, Smith flashed the plane's landing lights intending to alert the objects which he described as "smooth on the bottom and rough appearing on top".
1947-07-07	Rhodes UFO photographs	North AmericaUnited States; Phoenix, Arizona	Inventor and amateur astronomer William Albert Rhodes took photographs of what he described as a silent grey object that appeared after a thunderstorm. The Air Force investigated the photographs and concluded that they showed airborne "paper swept up by the winds".
1947-07-08	The Roswell Incident	North AmericaUnited States; about 30 mi. north of Roswell, New Mexico	Walter Haut, a United States Army Air Forces spokesperson, issued a press release announcing the "capture" of a "flying saucer". Hours later, the Army announced that the find was a crashed weather balloon. In 1978, the case regained attention after Jesse Marcel, the Army Officer who recovered the wreckage, told UFO researchers that the weather balloon explanation was a cover story. In 1994, the Air Force attributed the incident to the previously classified Project Mogul.
1947-07-29	Maury Island hoax	North AmericaUnited States; Puget Sound near Maury Island, Washington	Fred Crisman mailed an account from employee Harold A. Dahl, along with a cigar box of metal wreckage, to Raymond A. Palmer who had previously published the Shaver Mystery stories. Dahl claimed that his dog was killed and his son was injured by debris in an encounter with six flying doughnut-shaped objects. He also reported that he was subsequently threatened by Men in Black. On July 31, 1947, Palmer arranged a meeting between Crisman, Dahl, Air Force investigators, and flying saucer witnesses Kenneth Arnold & Emil Smith.
	The Green Fireballs	North AmericaUnited States; New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States	The US Air Force investigated reports of green flares streaking across the sky after an Air Force C-47 transport encountered a green ball of fire on 5 December 1948. The pilot, Captain Goede, described the object as larger than a meteor and not arching downward as a meteor would. The Air Force investigation was inconclusive.
1948-01-07	Mantell UFO incident	North AmericaUnited States; Kentucky	Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky, United States, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object. While following the object, he climbed beyond and blacked out from a lack of oxygen. The military later identified the craft he was pursuing as likely a Skyhook weather balloon.
1948-03-25	Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax	North AmericaUnited States; New Mexico	Conmen Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer sold "magnetic oil-detecting machines" based on the story that they had replicated technology from a crashed spaceship. The pair were convicted of fraud in 1953. Elements of their story regarding a crashed ship with occupants were later entangled in the Roswell narrative.
1948-07-24	Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter	North AmericaUnited States; Montgomery, Alabama	Clarence Chiles and John Whitted, American commercial pilots, reported that their airplane had nearly collided with a UFO near Montgomery. According to the pilots the object "looked like a wingless aircraft...it seemed to have two rows of windows through which glowed a very bright light, as brilliant as a magnesium flare."
1948-10-01	Gorman dogfight	North AmericaUnited States; North Dakota	A US Air Force pilot sighted and pursued a UFO for 27 minutes over Fargo, North Dakota. According to US Air Force officer Edward J. Ruppelt, this was one of three cases, along with the Mantell incident and Chiles-Whitted encounter, that shifted the Air Force's attitude about UFO reports leading to the creation of Project Blue Book.