All good points. I doubt the folks running that site have vetted every one of their hundreds of thousands of data points, so it's not an authoritative source,

All good points. I doubt the folks running that site have vetted every one of their hundreds of thousands of data points, so it's not an authoritative source, just a descriptive one at most. And, when did science fiction literature start getting big and developing plots involving aliens, and might that have stimulated people's imaginations about UFOs and aliens (which then conversely stimulated more scifi about them)? Was this happening prior to the atomic age or space age, or did that kind of scifi really get started with the space race? If the latter, that might also explain the huge increase in imaginings... er, sightings. I also can't help but wonder at the timing, with geopolitical tensions rising and China challenging US military and technological supremacy. It's quite a coincidence. Maybe it's the mother of all CIA mindfuck psyops, to introduce a new source of uncertainty and deterrence into the CCP and Russia's strategic calculations. There's "whistleblowers" on TV claiming the US is in possession of "exotic materials", aka alien tech, since the 1940s. Just how much has been reverse engineered in that time, and deployed in super secret weapons systems that not even Congress knows about? Would the CCP really want to risk WWIII against the US when there's even a small possibility of that? There's a great scene in "The Expanse" relevant to this situation, where UN Deputy Undersecretary Avasarala has a meeting considering the possibility of first contact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs "I have a file with nine hundred pages of analysis and contingency plans for war with Mars, including fourteen different scenarios for what to do if they develop an unexpected new technology. My file for what to do if an advanced alien species comes calling, is three pages long, and begins with 'Find God'".