It took me less than 2 mins to find this............
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_saucers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_saucers
Although disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as recorded occasionally since the Middle Ages, the first highly publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947
A manuscript illustration of the 10th-century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.<SUP id=cite_ref-Richardson_2-0 class=reference>[3]</SUP>
Perhaps the oldest recording of a saucer-shaped object is from 1290, when a silver disc was reported flying over a village in Yorkshire.<SUP id=cite_ref-elsewhere_3-0 class=reference>[4]</SUP> Disc-like flying objects were occasionally reported throughout the millennium. For example, in a mass sighting over Nuremberg in 1561, discs and spheres were reported emerging from large cylinders. (woodcut at left) They also frequently show up in religious artwork,<SUP id=cite_ref-4 class=reference>[5]</SUP> though it is usually ambiguous as to whether the artists were trying to depict something that had been seen or whether there was obscure religious symbolism involved. In particular, artwork of the Annunciation of Mary frequently shows a narrow beam of light descending from a saucer-like object. (examples at right and lower left)
Surprisingly, long before the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947 and the adoption of the term "flying saucer" by the press, spacecraft of human or alien origin were often illustrated as classic flying saucers in the popular press, dating back to at least 1911
- Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a Song Chinese government scholar-official and prolific polymath inventor and scholar, wrote a vivid passage in his Dream Pool Essays (1088 - about an unidentified flying object. He recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses in 11th-century Anhui and Jiangsu (especially in the city of Yangzhou), who stated that a flying object with opening doors would shine a blinding light from its interior (from an object shaped like a pearl) that would cast shadows from trees for ten miles in radius, and was able to take off at tremendous speeds.<SUP id=cite_ref-15 class=reference>[16]</SUP>
- On January 25, 1878, The Denison Daily News wrote that local farmer John Martin had reported seeing a large, dark, circular flying object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed." Martin also said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.<SUP id=cite_ref-16 class=reference>[17]</SUP>
- On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles west of San Francisco, reported by Lt. Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet. Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and "soared" above the clouds, departing directly away from the earth after two to three minutes. The largest had an apparent size of about six suns.<SUP id=cite_ref-17 class=reference>[18]</SUP>
- 1916 and 1926: The three oldest known pilot UFO sightings, of 1305 cataloged by NARCAP. On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochford reported a row of lights, like lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared. In January 1926, a pilot reported six "flying manhole covers" between Wichita, Kansas and Colorado Springs, Colorado. In late September 1926, an airmail pilot over Nevada was forced to land by a huge, wingless cylindrical object.<SUP id=cite_ref-18 class=reference>[19]</SUP>
- On August 5, 1926, while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Nicholas Roerich reported that members of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp the thing changed in its direction from south to southwest. And we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun.” <SUP id=cite_ref-19 class=reference>[20]</SUP> Another description by Roerich was, "...A shiny body flying from north to south. Field glasses are at hand. It is a huge body. One side glows in the sun. It is oval in shape. Then it somehow turns in another direction and disappears in the southwest." <SUP id=cite_ref-20 class=reference>[21]</SUP>
- In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II, "Foo-fighters" (metallic spheres, balls of light and other shapes that followed aircraft) were reported and on occasion photographed by Allied and Axis pilots. Some proposed Allied explanations at the time included St. Elmo's Fire, the planet Venus, hallucinations from oxygen deprivation, or German secret weapon.<SUP id=cite_ref-21 class=reference>[22]</SUP><SUP id=cite_ref-22 class=reference>[23]</SUP>
- On February 25, 1942, U.S. Army observers reported unidentified aircraft both visually and on radar over the Los Angeles, California region. Antiaircraft artillery was fired at what was presumed to be Japanese planes. No readily apparent explanation was offered, though some officials dismissed the reports of aircraft as being triggered by anxieties over expected Japanese air attacks on California. However, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson insisted real aircraft were involved. The incident later became known as the Battle of Los Angeles, or the West coast air raid.
- In 1946, there were over 2000 reports, collected primarily by the Swedish military, of unidentified aerial objects in the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece, then referred to as "Russian hail", and later as "ghost rockets", because it was thought that these mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Although most were thought to be natural phenomena like meteors, over 200 were tracked on radar and deemed to be "real physical objects" by the Swedish military. In a 1948 top secret document, the Swedish military told the USAF Europe in 1948 that some of their investigators believed them to be extraterrestrial in origin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object
