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You're listening to episode 46 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World,

where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason.

In this episode, we're talking about Kenneth Arnold and the first UFOs.

I'm Dom Betanelli and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hi Jimmy. Howdy, Dom.

On June 22nd, 1947, 72 years ago this week,

businessman Kenneth Arnold was piloting his plane over the skies of Washington State

when he saw something strange. It was a convoy of nine unusual objects moving in the sky at

a fantastic speed. When he landed, he reported what he saw and it touched off the modern era

of UFO sightings. And that's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious

World. So Jimmy, let's start by having you tell us how you became aware of this particular case.

I don't remember when I first became aware of it, but I've known about it for a long time.

It's the classic case kicking off the modern UFO era. So it's mentioned in all the literature.

I've been aware of the basic facts of the case, like the ones you just mentioned and some others

for some time, but I'd never really taken a hard look at the details of this case until I started

researching this episode. In approaching, you know, UFO reports, I try to have healthy skepticism,

even by people who support the extraterrestrial hypothesis, they'll admit 90, 95, 98 percent

of all UFO sightings are either misidentifications of something that's not exotic or their outright

hoaxes. And so when I was thinking about this episode before starting the research process,

I assumed one of the first things that I assumed was that when he saw these things out

...