"(Adds to more than 100% because some gave more than one answer.)
"Guesses ranged all the way from practical to miraculous. Among
the latter was a woman, citing biblical text, who said it was a
sign of the world's end. A man in the West thought the discs
were radio waves from the Bikini atomic bomb explosion, while
another man saw in them a new product being put out by the
'Dupont people.'
"A few people smelled a publicity or advertising stunt, while
others felt sure that the saucers were after all only some kind
of meteor or comet."
Informal newspaper polls from 1947 support the general line shown
above.
Interestingly enough 90% of Americans had heard of flying
saucers, while only half had heard about the Marshall Plan, or 61%
about the Taft-Hartley Labor bill.
- Jan L. Aldrich
