In 1947, a pilot spotted something over Mount Rainier and accidentally named one of America's most beloved frozen treats.
That sighting kicked off a national obsession – and one savvy ice cream man turned it into a dessert that is still selling by the millions today.
The treat just turned 75 and it was celebrated in a way your grandfather would appreciate.
How Tom Carvel Built Americas First Ice Cream Franchise on a Flat Tire
Tom Carvel was a Greek immigrant born Athanassios Karvelas – his family shortened the name to Carvel before they even left Greece.
He drove an ice cream truck around Hartsdale, New York.
On Memorial Day weekend in 1934, his truck got a flat tire.
He pulled into a pottery store parking lot, his ice cream started melting, and he did the only sensible thing – flagged down passing drivers and sold it to them anyway.
They loved it.
Carvel stayed in that lot for the rest of the weekend, and by the end of the season he had pocketed over $3,500.
The ice cream truck stayed broken.
The empire began.
By 1947, Carvel had built something nobody had done before in America – the first retail ice cream franchise.
By 1951, he had 100 stores.
That's when Kenneth Arnold's legacy got delicious.
The 1947 UFO Craze That Inspired the Carvel Flying Saucer Ice Cream Sandwich
On June 24, 1947, Arnold – a businessman and private pilot from Idaho – was flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he spotted nine shiny objects moving at speeds he estimated above 1,200 miles per hour.
He described their motion like a saucer skipping across water.
The press ran with it.
By that afternoon, the story had hit every newscast and newspaper in the country – the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum called it "the viral story of its day."
Within two weeks, historians documented at least 800 copycat sightings across the United States.
Within months, the term "flying saucer" had embedded itself permanently into American culture – spawning government investigations, Cold War paranoia, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and eventually, a round ice cream sandwich.
In 1951, as Tom Carvel celebrated opening his 100th store, he introduced a new treat named for the obsession gripping the country.
The Flying Saucer – soft serve vanilla between two chocolate wafers, circular by design – has never left the menu since.
Carvel Flying Saucer Turns 75 and Still Sells Two Million a Year
On March 20 – the first day of spring – Carvel sold Flying Saucers for 75 cents at participating locations nationwide.
That's it.
One day.
The same treat Tom Carvel invented when Harry Truman was in the White House.
Over two million Flying Saucers sold last year alone.
The recipe has not changed.
"It is a treat that resonates across generations," Carvel told Fox News Digital, "one that parents pass down to their kids, who become fans themselves because it tastes just as good as it did 75 years ago."
To mark the anniversary, Carvel crash-landed oversized Flying Saucer inflatables at three historic locations – Coney Island in Brooklyn, Massapequa on Long Island, and West Palm Beach, Florida.
The Coney Island shop has been operated by the same family for four generations.
The Massapequa location has been a community staple since it opened in 1954.
And the West Palm Beach store – the one with the original slanted roof – was where Tom Carvel himself used to test new products during his Florida winters.
Why Carvel Soft Serve Still Beats Every New Ice Cream Trend
There's a reason the Flying Saucer outlasted the UFO craze, outlasted Tom Carvel himself – who died in 1990 – and outlasted every food trend of the last seven decades.
It's not complicated.
Two wafers with soft serve in the middle.
Tom Carvel never went to culinary school.
He was a drummer from Connecticut who reportedly borrowed around $15 from his future wife Agnes to buy his first ice cream truck – money that eventually built the country's first retail ice cream franchise, one that now has over 400 locations in 18 countries.
What he understood better than anyone was the thing every great American company understands at its best – give people something simple and delicious and don't change it.
Nobody asked for 47 flavors of oat milk ice cream.
And nobody needed a deconstructed soft serve experience with artisanal wafers sourced from a Brooklyn collective.
The thing flying off Carvel's shelves at two million units a year is the exact same round vanilla-soft-serve-between-two-chocolate-wafers that Tom Carvel invented the year the Brooklyn Dodgers still played at Ebbets Field.
That's not nostalgia.
That's a product that actually works.
Seventy-five years, the same two wafers, the same soft serve – because Tom Carvel got it right the first time.
Sources:
- Deirdre Bardolf, "America's UFO-inspired ice-cream treat turns 75 — and it's still flying off shelves," Fox News, March 20, 2026.
- Carvel Ice Cream, "Flying Saucers Crash Into Carvel Shoppes to Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of an Ice Cream Icon," PR Newswire, March 19, 2026.
- "The History of Carvel Ice Cream in Westchester County," Westchester Magazine, July 30, 2025.
- "1947: Year of the Flying Saucer," National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
- "Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting," History.com.