One of earliest recorded UFO sightings in America happened on 18th January, 1644 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when lights rose out of the water near Boston, zoomed across the sky and vanished over the horizon.

The events, as documented by the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop in his journal, took place a good 300 years before Roswell, contradicting the idea that UFO sightings in the US are an exclusively 20th Century phenomenon.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain that the most common explanation for what was witnessed was an “ignis fatuus” (a type of gas combustion); investigate what other UFO sightings took place between 1644 and today; and speculate why aliens didn’t seem to have any interest in abducting humans until the 1960s.

Further Reading:

• ‘America’s First UFO Sighting’ (History.com, 2016): https://www.history.com/news/americas-first-ufo-sighting

• ‘A pilgrim UFO sighting came long before Roswell’ (Ripleys, 2018): https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/pilgrim-ufo/

• ‘Top 5 shocking UFO sightings in the USA’ (History, 2022): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR4mDKwagAA

#Strange #1600s #US   

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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

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