Chehalis Flying Saucer Party

Chehalis Washington is the place from which Kenneth Arnold took off on that fateful day in June of 1947. While flying past Mt. Rainer he spotted 9 mysterious objects. Arnold clocked the speed of these mysterious objects at approximately 1500 mph – an impossible speed for any known aircraft at the time. Arnold radioed ahead of his landing and told his tale. The story spread like wildfire and a few days later, he was asked by a newspaper reporter to describe the way these objects flew. Arnold compared their flight pattern to the action of “skipping a saucer across the water” and soon the press coined the term “flying saucer” – a catch-all term that was used to describe any strange object spotted in the sky before the more clinical term “UFO” gained prominence a few years later.