“I feel I simply turned into the first president to ever publicly mention Space 51,” President Barack Obama joked at Sunday night’s Kennedy Middle Honors experience at The White House. The line got a tremendous snicker from the target audience in attendance, but he can have been telling the truth.

This 12 months’s honorees integrated Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, and Billy Joel. Nevertheless it used to be all over his remarks about actress Shirley MacLaine, who wrote about her personal UFO sightings in her memoir Sage-ing Whereas Age-ing that the president brought up the top secret military base in southern Nevada.

“Now, while you first change into president, one of the most questions that individuals ask you is what’s truly happening in Space 51,” Obama mentioned. “Once I wished to grasp, I known as Shirley MacLaine. I think I just turned into the first president to ever publicly mention Area 51. How’s that, Shirley?”

Consistent with NPR’s Adam Wollner, the closest another U.S. president has come to discussing House 51 was once when President Invoice Clinton issued a presidential decision exempting the website online from environmental disclosure regulations. But that file best said the bottom as “the Air Pressure’s operating region near Groom Lake, Nevada.” The CIA didn’t well known its existence except final year.

Watch video under, via The White House:

[picture by the use of screengrab]

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