Source: The Economist

IN THE FINAL scene of “Independence Day”, a blockbuster film from 1996, Captain Steve Hiller (Will Smith), having saved the world from alien annihilation, watches as exploding debris from a UFO mothership lights up the sky, just in time for the American holiday. Turning to his stepson, he says with a smile, “Didn’t I promise you fireworks?” For Americans, such pyrotechnic displays are an important Fourth of July tradition. Can the same be said for UFOs?

Perhaps. According to the National UFO Reporting Centre (NUFORC), an American non-profit organisation that has collected reports of unidentified flying objects since 1974, UFO sightings tend to spike on July 4th. Between 1995 and 2018, around 2% of all sightings recorded by NUFORC fell on this date; seven times more than would be expected by chance. What explains this strange phenomenon?