Kenneth Albert Arnold (March 29 1915 – January 16 1984) was an American aviator, businessman, and politician who is widely credited with launching the modern era of UFO sightings in the United States. On June 24 1947, while flying his CallAir A‑2 near Mount Rainier, Washington, Arnold reported seeing nine bright, saucer‑shaped objects flying in a “V” formation at an estimated speed of over 1,200 miles per hour. His description of the objects moving “like a saucer skipped across water” gave rise to the popular term “flying saucer.”

Arnold’s account was front‑page news across the nation and spurred hundreds of similar reports in the summer of 1947, including the famous Roswell incident. Initially skeptical of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, Arnold believed the objects might be secret military aircraft. He later became an active investigator of UFO reports, co‑authoring the book The Coming of the Saucers (1952) with publisher Ray Palmer.

In 1962, Arnold ran as the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Idaho, losing the general election. He remained a prominent figure in UFO research circles until his death in 1984. His sighting remains a foundational case in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena and is often cited as the beginning of the modern UFO era.