On This Day In History & My Fascination With U.F.O's

Today is July 19, 2025 and I am on the 19th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I can't believe I have shown up consistently for 19 days!!! My intentions for this challenge have been to work on my habits of showing up consistently and to no longer hide from posting content. You can read all about why doing this challenge is important to me here in my first blog post.

Today I went to the website history.com. They have a page called This Day In History. One of the events they listed for July 19 was that in 1952 "air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., detect UFOs over the White House and US Capitol building. More appear a week later, but the government dismisses the sightings as a harmless weather phenomenon." You can read more about the incident here.

Ha! There are a lot of things I could say about Washington, D. C. right now, but I am not going to touch that. I will leave that to other platforms to discuss.

What I do want to talk about is my fascination with U.F.O.s

The first movie I saw in the theater was E.T. I was 3 years old and have a vague memory of this. I remember the beginning scared me a bit. The beings were collecting plants in the dark and E.T. gets left behind. I remember shouting "Reese's Pieces!" out loud in the theater, when Elliott was leaving a trail of them for E.T. I also remember hearing people laugh at this and my family shushing me. Even though the movie did have some scary scenes in it for me at the time, the thought of beings from other planets fascinated me!

Another popular movie that I remember being on TV a lot of the time in the 80s was the movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. My mom always wanted to watch it when it was on. The movie also scared me and fascinated me! This 1977 classic, also directed by Steven Spielberg, still holds up as an amazing piece of cinema. It is my top favorite movie. I own two different copies of it with different bonus features and watch it about 2-3 times a year.

These two movies activated something within my soul. I was always looking up at the stars as a kid (and still as an adult) wondering what else it out there. Who else is out there? There are trillions of stars and galaxies! We can't be the only civilization.

One of my dream vacations would be to visit Devil's Tower in Wyoming. This location plays a big part in the story of Close Encounter's Of The Third Kind.

The Hudson Valley, which is the area of N.Y. State that I live in, has a history of U.F.O. sightings. Last summer I went with my husband to the Pine Bush U.F.O. and Paranormal Museum, that is in Pine Bush, N.Y. This small town in the Hudson Valley has a lot of history with U.F.O.s and other paranormal phenomena. They also hold a yearly U.F.O. fair in June. I haven't been to it yet, because it is always happening when I have something else going on.

Here is a fun photo of me with my husband visiting the museum last year.

What are your thoughts about U.F.O.s and life on other planets? Have you ever had a sighting? Let me know in the comments. I did have a sighting once. Maybe I will share that story another time.