October, 1969.

It was a warm, muggy night in Leary, Georgia. Around 7:15 that evening, outside a local Lions Club, a group of men were gathered, one of them preparing to enter the meeting and give a speech. Suddenly, from out of the crowd, came a voice, it’s owner’s hand pointed at the sky. “Look!”

There, about 30 degrees above the horizon west of where they were standing, was a strange white object, about as bright as the moon. It moved toward their direction, but stopped beyond a stand of pine trees some distance from them. The object, which appeared to be self-illuminated and not solid in nature, then changed color, first to blue, then to red, then back to white, before appearing to recede into the distance.

The men were baffled. None of them could identify what they had just seen nor could any of them explain it. Most of them eventually shrugged it off, either reasoning it away or else forgetting about it.

But one of the men could not.

The man pondered the incident, replaying the event over and over in his mind, trying to make sense of it. Ultimately, nearly four years later, on September 18, 1973, he filed a report with International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, calling the sighting “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen.” He related the circumstances of the night, saying “a kind of green light appeared in the western sky. This was right after sundown. It got brighter and brighter. And then it eventually disappeared. It didn’t have any solid substance to it, it was just a very peculiar-looking light. None of us could understand what it was.”

The man didn’t know if anything would come from his report, nor was he fully convinced that what he had seen was a UFO (although he wasn’t fully convinced it wasn’t, either). He simply wanted to make peace with the memory but getting it on record and letting the “experts” do with it what they would, end of story.

Except it wasn’t.

Because this wasn’t just any man.

He was Jimmy Carter, then governor of the state of Georgia and future president of the United States.

And both ufologists–and Carter’s opponents–had a field day when the politician’s supposed “sighting” came to light. An investigation was launched, and most of those present at the event tried to distance themselves from the claim, saying they either did not recall the event or did not recall it as being anything important. Carter, however, stood his ground. He did see something; he was sure of it. And what he saw was not Venus, as some investigators claimed, as he was an amateur astronomer and knew what Venus looked like. He also said that, at first, he had assumed it was probably a military aircraft from a nearby base; however, the object did not make any sound like a helicopter or other aircraft would produce. During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter promised that, if elected, he would encourage the government release “every piece of information” about UFOs available to the public and to scientists.

Carter was ultimately elected, of course, though it’s impossible to say whether it was because of or in spite of his UFO obsession. What is clear is that, after assuming the office, he backed away from his campaign promises on extraterrestrial life, saying that the release of some information might have “defense implications” and pose a threat to national security, leading some to believe that, as commander-in-chief, he was either roped into a government cover-up of alien visits or that the CIA refused to give him information about UFOs (both of which he vehemently denied).

So what, if anything, did Jimmy Carter see in the skies above Georgia that warm night in 1969?

We may never know. But, whatever it was, it certainly added some flavor to the life and legacy of the 39th President of the United States.