In 1952, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, wrote a memo to Lord Cherwell who was the secretary of state for air asking for information on ‘flying saucers’.
This memo from Churchill only surfaced in 2010 and its origins and context are discussed by History.com (this image of it is courtesy of the Express).
It certainly would have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall as the brief he requested was received and digested.
The BBC suggested that Churchill actually covered up information about flying saucers, or UFOs, on the basis that it would cause mass panic if it was released, however The Churchill Project says they cannot find any evidence to support this.
Churchill certainly had thought deeply about life outside of Earth, we can see this for certain in the article he wrote, unearthed in 2017, which was entitled ‘Are we alone in the universe?’ of which Israeli astrophysicist Mario Livio wrote an analysis. This quote is from it:
I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilization here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.
Although Churchill’s request was almost half a century ago, some things don’t change. So many countries have been found to have covered things up about UFOs. Even today a new president or prime minister of virtually any country on Earth must surely have a similar question at the top of their list when they take office.