Thanks to a long-forgotten nineteenth-century farmer named John Martin, unidentified flying objects were first described as "saucers" here in Texas. According to the article "A Strange Phenomenon" that appeared in the Denison Daily News on January 25, 1878, Martin was hunting when he saw "a dark object high in the northern sky." The news account states that "the peculiar shape and the velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention, and he strained his eyes to discover its character. When first noticed it appeared to be about the size of an orange, after which it continued to grow larger.

"After gazing at it for some time," the article continues, "Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left of viewing to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size and appeared to be going through space at a wonderful speed. When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height."

Although Martin clearly saw a "saucer," Idaho pilot Kenneth Arnold is widely--and incorrectly--credited as the first person to describe an unidentified flying object as such. Arnold ushered in the post-war wave of UFO hysteria in 1947 when he told a local reporter, and in turn, the Associated Press, that he had seen an object in the sky over Washington's Cascade Mountains that "flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." Arnold's account coined the term "flying saucer," although that honor rightly belongs to Texan John Martin, who had spotted one 69 years earlier.