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July 2 or, in some places, June 24 is held as World UFO Day. It is a fun way to inspire people to look up more in the sky in the hope of finding UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). Did you know there are there's several UFO organizations across the world? Humans have always gazed at the stars and pondered whether they are the only beings in the universe.
The craze behind this mysterious creature, who's thought to be a highly superior being with a thirst for dominating our planet, is palpable.
Mainstream media even publish any news they can get on aliens- it doesn't matter if it's sugar-coated or a mere conspiracy.
Recently, some feature articles from news portals have been circulating on social media about aliens living among us. Clark Kent did not cover the report. J'onn J'onzz, aka Martian Manhunter, may be reading that paper and wondering how they found out. But to us human beings, the question remains: are we alone?
Source of obsession
UFOs became a source of obsession after WWII. The first UFO sighting was in 1947 when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see nine high-speed flying objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane.
Arnold predicted the speed of the crescent-shaped planes as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved like saucers skipping on water.
In the newspaper, it was exaggerated as saucer-shaped, hence the term flying saucer. Since then, many unidentified aerial objects have been allegedly visible over the skies.
The U.S. Air Force tried to brush off the idea as Soviet new plane models or some asteroid. But in the end, they ended up opening a committee, and now people predict that the Pentagon has some highly classified information on UFO's whereabouts.
Area 51
In 1980, the term 'Area 51' rose to create buzz. In November 1989, a conspiracist named Bob Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas T.V. station KLAS.
He claimed to work near Area 51. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought the saucers were secret terrestrial aircraft, but on closer examination and from multiple documents, he realized it's of extraterrestrial origin.
He declared boldly that they use a rare metal moscovium, an element that decays in a fraction of a second, to warp space. Later, the Los Angeles Times declared him a fraud and his degrees from MIT and Caltech were plain hoaxes.
In the pop culture
Fiction has always portrayed scenes like aliens befriending socially awkward protagonists and the government trying to prevent disclosure of the discovery of extraterrestrial entities.
'Koi Mil Gaya' is a classic Hindi film that's been a part of our core memory. We rooted for Jaadu to return to his home yet sobbed while watching the emotional goodbye.
Hollywood motion pictures include 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the novel by Arthur C. Clarke), Easy Rider, the Steven Spielberg films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Hangar 18, Total Recall, Men in Black, and Independence Day. And, of course, how can we forget Star Trek and Star Wars?
In March 2001, former astronaut and United States Senator John Glenn made a guest appearance on the T.V. series Frasier, playing a political personnel responsible for UFO coverup.
A mystery still unravelled: Conspiracies and controversies
Many countries form committees and military task forces hoping to find UFOs. Personal space enthusiasts also run personal investigations. No matter how much effort is spent, E.T.s are still inside the fog.
Either they turn out to be hoaxes or random debris. No solid backup is ever found. Yet you can't toss these out of their mind.
Many conspiracists come up with many theories, even the ones where extraterrestrial entities contribute to stepping up our civilization. Egyptian pyramids, for instance, and the alien fanatic community believe that aliens arrived in ancient times to pave the way for humanity to civilization. Interestingly, conspiracy theories even argue that Earth governments are in communication with extraterrestrial visitors confidentially, and the governments are allowing alien abduction.