In Washington state, ninety kilometers from Seattle, the formidable Mount Rainier has been sleeping for over a hundred years. And although there have been no eruptions of Rainier since 1894, from time to time mystical and sometimes fatal events take place on its hills. In 2014, for example, while trying to conquer one of the ridges of the rocky giant, a group of six climbers died, which was a great tragedy for the United States of America. Associated with this volcano and one urban legend, which played an important role in the formation of ufology.
On a hot summer day in 1947, American businessman Kenneth Arnold, flying past Mount Rainier, saw a six-kilometer line of disc-shaped aircraft lining up along the peaks of the Cascade Mountains in the air. In their shape, they resembled a crescent moon with a small turret on top. Arnold suggested that the speed of flying discs can exceed the speed of sound, and the algorithm of their movement is similar to the movement of a pebble or saucer thrown by someone's hand into river water.
Having reached Washington, Kenneth Arnold decided to share his observations with the whole world. He began to give numerous interviews, and even took part in the investigation, which was conducted by the Idaho Daily Statesman two weeks after the incident. The consequences were startling. In the couple of months that have passed since the meeting with the flying saucers, America has been swept by an unprecedented wave of UFO popularity. Witnesses of unidentified objects were found almost daily, and very soon their number exceeded a thousand people.
Numerous theories began to emerge about what Kenneth Arnett actually saw on June 24, 1947. The press was skeptical about the businessman's testimony, since no confirmation of the reality of a UFO was found. Astronomer D. G. Menzel suggested that the "plates" he saw were in fact the result of optical illusion caused by the contact of the sun's rays with fog or snow. The eyewitness himself did not stand aside from the heated discussion either. He suggested that the flying objects were created as part of a secret military project owned either by the Americans themselves or by the Russians. In the sixties, after reconsidering his views, Arnold decided that floating discs could be a form of life unknown to modern science. There is still no consensus on the issue of those events.
Despite the fact that the story told by Arnold almost immediately began to be harshly criticized, and after some time receded into the background before more recent evidence of UFOs, the case in the Cascade Mountains occupies an honorable place in the history of ufology, and the term coined by Kenneth Arnold "Flying saucer" has become a part of the modern lexicon.
