The Pilgrims Reported UFOs in the Massachusetts Skies

Tales of unidentified flying objects have captured people's imaginations worldwide for many years, but did you know the Pilgrims saw them, too?

Yes, the Pilgrims, who stepped on Plymouth Rock after arriving from England on the Mayflower, claimed they saw UFOs here in the New World.

I kid you not.

History.com says, "On March 1, 1639, John Winthrop opened his diary in which he recorded the trials and triumphs of his fellow Puritans as they made a new life in America."

"As the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony put pen to paper, he began to recount a most unusual event that had recently caused a stir among the English immigrants."

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According to Winthrop, James Everell, "a sober, discrete man," and two others reported seeing a strange green light in the night sky while rowing in the Muddy River, which emptied into a tidal basin in the Charles River.

Winthrop wrote, "When it stood still, it flamed up and was about three yards square. When it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine."

According to Winthrop, the men observed the light for two to three hours as it "ran as swift as an arrow" between them and Charlestown, some two miles away.

"Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place," Winthrop wrote.

Ripley's.com says the incident is the "first recorded UFO sighting." Ripley's says the men in the boat felt that the light had transported them to another location on the river.

Governor Winthrop posted the following entry to his diary on January 18, 1644: "About midnight, three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the water near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, at went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away."

As an avid keeper of early records, Fox News reported Governor Winthrop has "serious street cred in academia."

Not everyone is a believer. Some have speculated the sightings might have been nothing more than swamp gas.