On Tuesday, the House Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee held a congressional hearing on UFOs — which, BTW, are now known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).
It was the first public hearing on the subject in 50+ years, per NPR, but cool your jets, Mulder. No evidence of aliens has been found (yet), according to Scott W. Bray, deputy director of Naval intelligence — though some incidents do remain unexplained.
Officials promised to declassify more information moving forward — like this video captured by a US Navy pilot — and revealed that the government’s UAP database contains ~400 reports dating back to 2004. Most of those are from military personnel.
… you want as many reports as you can fit in your basement full of filing cabinets. That, my friends, is a job for the National UFO Reporting Center.
Its database contains over 138k+ reports and counting, most from the US and Canada during the 21st and 20th centuries (though there are a few outliers, like this clipping from an 18th-century London newspaper.)
Accounts are organized by date, state, and, oddly, shape. It turns out a majority of people saw a mysterious light in the sky, far more so than people who spotted a disc.
“Cigar” is a more popular shape than you’d think and includes things like Oumuamua, a mysterious object spotted in 2017. Scientists still don’t know what it was, but did conclude it was not aliens. Sounds like the truth is still out there.
BTW: Thanks to the Northern Ontario UFO Research and Study organization, you can listen to reports made by phone from 1974 to 1977 online.