“I don’t know what it was,” Chiao admitted.
Cripes, even I know what it was.
In the '50's, B Movies were prevalent and everyone was seeing flying saucers. In the '90's, the X-Files was on and suddenly everyone was seeing flying triangles with lights all over them instead. Now it's the 2020's, every third headline is about drones, so everyone is seeing "drones" everywhere.
Boy, it sure is absolutely completely unpredictable coincidence that people always report seeing mysterious objects in the sky that perfectly correlate with the widespread news and entertainment media of their time!