Everyone knows about the October 4, 1967 UFO sighting in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia but not many people realize that the first documented North American UFO sighting was in New Minas, Nova Scotia 171 years earlier - October 12, 1796. The sighting was documented in Simeon Perkins diary.
Colonel Simeon Perkins was a Nova Scotia militia leader, merchant, diarist and politician. Although he led the defence of Liverpool from attacks during the American Revolution, French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars he is best known for the detailed diary he kept. In his diary, Perkins kept a careful record of births, deaths and marriages - making his diary a must read for genealogists researching the Liverpool area. He also faithfully recorded the weather and often commented on religion, the war at sea, and public affairs.
And of course, in his diary you will find the 1796 UFO sighting.
The entry is hard to read so here is a transcription of the sighting as written in the diary excerpt above:
"A strange story is going that a fleet of ships have been seen in the air in some part of the Bay of Fundy. Mr. Darrow is lately from there by land. I enquired of him. He says that they were said to be seen at New Minas, at one Mr. Ratchford's by a girl about sunrise and that the girl being frightened called out and that two men that were in the house went out and saw the same sight, being fifteen ships and a man forward of them with his hand stretched out. The ships made to the eastward. They were so near that the people saw their sides and ports. The story did not obtain universal credit, but some people believed it."