Proving the Obviously Untrue

Ok, it's another pet peeve posting. The BBC have just posted a story about strange lights seen over Bangor. The summary reads "Residents in County Down have raised the possibility of a UFO sighting above the skies of Bangor." It's not a possibility, it was a UFO sighting. That is, they were Unidentified Flying Objects. It irritates me when people use UFO to mean "bizarre alien craft about to abduct me", because that would clearly be a well identified flying object. On another note, I lived in Bangor for many years and I also had a UFO sighting when I was there. I was in the back garden with my telescope watching Saturn, and was vaguely aware (I had one eye shut, the other to the eyepiece of my 8" telescope (SCT)) that there odd lightning like flashes going on. I was watching the sky for a while then, and was lucky enough to see one right in the centre of my vision. It was a very bright corkscrew like motion that lasted about a second. I shouldn't rely on memory, if I remember I will dig the details from my observation notebook.