World UFO Day: How Will You Celebrate?

Do you think you’ve ever seen a UFO?

World UFO Day is an awareness day for people to gather together and watch the skies for unidentified flying objects (UFO). The day is celebrated by some on June 24, and others on July 2.

June 24 is the date that reporter Kenneth Arnold wrote is generally considered to be the first widely reported UFO in the United States, while July 2 the supposed UFO crash in the 1947 Roswell incident.

The stated goal of the July 2 celebration is to raise awareness of “the undoubted existence of UFOs” and to encourage governments to declassify their files on UFO sightings.

Do you think they exist?

The issue seems to take on a new significance as government officials begin paying attention.

Top Pentagon officials told a House panel in May that there are now close to 400 reports from military personnel of possible encounters with UFOs — a significant increase from the 144 tracked in a major report released last year by the U.S. intelligence community.

A Navy official also said at the hearing that investigators are “reasonably confident” the floating pyramid-shaped objects captured on one leaked, widely seen military video were likely drones.

That footage, which the military confirmed last year was authentic, had helped spur interest in purported UFOs, also referred to as “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAPs.

Indiana Rep. André Carson, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee, called the hearing, the first in more than 50 years focused on the aerial incidents.

UAPs, Carson said, “are a potential national security threat and they need to be treated that way.”