It wasn't a particularly special day, or at least it hadn't started out that way. June 28th, weather was mainly wherever you were at that time. If you happened to be in New York City, it was fairly typical up until 10:53am of that very day.
That was when it was first spotted. Large glittery metal object, decidedly non-saucer shaped. More like a smoothly curved teardrop with stubby wings. It came in near the moon, and orbitted the Earth four times.
The first broadcast was incomprehensible gibberish. Again using New York City as a reference, the ship broadcast for fifteen minutes starting at 11:12am. The broadcast at 12:19am was gibberish as well, but this time included words pulled from the dozens of languages being sent via radio at that time.
Even before the linguists had finished working it over, the words "rescue" and "crash" had provided a basic motivation for this event and even the paranoia of that age was considering the possibility that this was exactly what was claimed.
The third broadcast was at 1:05pm in New York City. The people on the ship were apparently in serious trouble and about to lose control of their ship. It was the last broadcast before the ship began plunging into the atmosphere about three quarters of the way through that fourth orbit.
Each orbit had been a little slower, the first one insanely fast. The ship entered the atmosphere still too fast but at a fairly shallow angle - still trying to reduce their speed.
The ship began breaking apart in re-entry, now being tracked by chase planes that were only briefly able to catch view of the ship before it was out of their visual range again.
That, more than any claim of the broadcasts, convinced the vast majority of those watching and listening that the broadcasts were genuine. Contact with genuine extraterrestrials - and it was because their ship had mechanical problems.
Anyone who owned a car and gone for a long trip could sympathize.
It wasn't until well after the crash into shallow water off the coast that a visual picture of the extraterrestrials became available, one of the communications indicating that a signal had been sent to their homeworld but that it would take "a little time" for help to arrive.
When the television cameras saw the survivors coming out of their hatch, opinions had largely already been made on to what to do about these aliens. After all, if their world were coming by to pick them up later and they were here by accident - then it would be better not to go blowing up these aliens. Not that there weren't a lot of stupid paranoid people in power - but they were also stupid paranoid greedy people - and there was an opportunity here for grateful aliens to give something back to the people who played host to their stranded citizens.
However, appearance DID count for something, and the aliens' appearance on international television (even in black and white) did form/alter some opinions once it was revealed they were:
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(Posted Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:13)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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