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National Post Why everyone is suddenly seeing UFOs everywhere Tristin Hopper 14 hrs ago 22 Comments | 12 Opinion: Land-based education should be expanded to all schools in… Travel to Australia during Covid-19: What you need to know before you go a group of people sitting at a desk© Provided by National Post Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms) Last year, the UFO sightings that Canadians phoned into the organization Ufology Research rose by 46 per cent. The same thing is happening in the U.S. The American National U.F.O. Reporting Center recorded 1,000 more sightings than usual in 2020. So are we all on the cusp of an alien invasion? Watch the video or read the transcript below to find out. In Canada, the first documented wave of UFO sightings happened around 1914. In Ontario and Quebec in particular, dozens of reports were made of mysterious craft which sometimes dropped fireballs onto the ground below. In one instance, sightings of these things became so heavy that the army posted marksmen around Parliament Hill just in case. Did people think they were seeing space aliens? No; they thought they were seeing secret flying machines dispatched to Canada by Imperial Germany. No such machines existed, of course, but everyone was freaked out about the First World War, and soon every balloon, kite or passing automobile was being reported as an invading Zeppelin. The moral of the story? People are suggestible: If your neighbour Jim tells you he just saw the Kaiser bomb his chicken coop, your chances of magically seeing the same thing just went up. text: From the February 15, 1915 edition of the New York Times.From the February 15, 1915 edition of the New York Times. And UFOs have been getting a lot of very compelling press lately. In April of last year, the U.S. Navy officially released three videos taken by their pilots showing mysterious aircraft exhibiting qualities not known in any human-built machines. Then, just this month, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of a video showing a blinking triangular object in the sky. Now remember: The U.S. military makes it their business to identify weird things in the sky, just in case they have to shoot it down. And twice in the past 12 months they’ve said “hey everybody, here’s some stuff we totally can’t identify.” a group of people posing for the camera: Germans: The original space aliens.Germans: The original space aliens. It would be like if the Vatican came out and said “hey, we keep seeing ghosts everywhere and here’s video footage. WTF.” Here’s a hunch that ghost sightings would go up. Now added to that are a whole bunch of other factors seemingly tailor-made to spike the number of UFO sightings. Pandemic lockdowns have meant thousands more people at home with more time to look at the sky. There has also never been more weird stuff in the air. For $30 I can buy this drone and have a blinking red light hovering over your backwoods drinking spot tonight: Boom, UFO. Or you may have looked up into the sky in recent months and seen this freaking thing . This is Starlink, Elon Musk’s plan to surround the planet with a latticework of mass-produced satellites in order to provide cheap, global wireless internet. Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms) Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms) And we’re all super drunk or high right now. About a fifth of Canadians are drinking more under the pandemic , and with fewer public places to get drunk in, a lot of that drinking is happening on the balcony or the backyard: Prime UFO viewing territory. So, kick back, have a beer and join the party. If fighter pilots are seeing weird floating stuff they can’t make sense of, the door is wide open to you, fellow sky-watcher. • Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper