DC UFO?

WTF? A UFO on Capitol Hill? NotionsCapital’s Mike Licht was an eye witness:

At 5 PM today I was on Barracks Row, walking toward Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. Looking to my left, I saw a round or spherical shape in the sky, back-lit in the dusk, when the sky is lighter at higher elevations.

Lighting conditions made it hard to judge size (weather or barrage balloon? Hot air balloon? Blimp headed towards or away from me?) and distance (over the Mall, SW or NW DC, Georgetown or Arlington?).  I wasn’t carrying a camera, of course.

I walked up 8th Street, crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, and stopped to look at the object again. Drivers inbound on Pennsylvania honked their horns to acknowledge the sighting; one stopped his car, beckoned me over, and asked if I knew what was up there. He was worried about terrorists. I pointed out that the object was slow or stationary and authorities would have already zapped it if it were a threat. I suggested tuning his car radio to WTOP and walked home to scan the web and broadcast media (it was too dark for photos by then).

I checked the web and WTOP and emailed the media (thanks, guys), but no one had heard or seen anything. John Kelly from the Post wondered if this was a promo for The Day the Earth Stood Still. “Klaatu barada Nixon nikto,” I replied, recalling the black-and-white flying saucer on the National Mall, unaware that uber-imaginative Hollywood geniuses had exhumed the 1951 script and reanimated it as a subwoofer-and-pixel Imax superspectacle.  But I digress.

I emailed the authorities (FAA, DHS, USCG, AFDW, MPD) but none have replied yet. The UFOlogists have, but my query was the first they had heard about this incident.

There is a remote possibility that an intergalactic freight transport bound for Spaceport USA went off-course; I will contact Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson to find out.

And where was Congressman Kucinich when this happened?

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.