Still-unexplained phenomena, from Roswell to the ‘Belgium Wave.’
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UFOs aren’t new. Indeed, humans have been describing unidentified flying objects for millennia, with depictions of disk-like objects and unusual atmospheric objects found in the art and literature of ancient civilizations from the Sumerians and the Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans.
But the modern era of UFOs took off in the middle of the 20th century, right around the time rockets and high-tech aircraft were being devised, often in secret. Coincidence? Paranoia? Perhaps. In any event, these seven UFO sightings gained a lot of attention—and raised a lot of eyebrows.
READ MORE: Interactive Map: UFO Sightings Taken Seriously by the U.S. Government
1. Kenneth Arnold, 1947
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Pilots E.J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold, and Ralph E. Stevens look at a photo of an unidentified flying object which they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington, 1947.
The origin of today’s fascination can be traced back to civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold. While flying his small aircraft near Washington’s Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947, Arnold claimed to have seen nine blue, glowing objects flying fast—at an estimated 1,700 m.p.h.—in a “V” formation.
He first believed the objects to be some sort of new military aircraft—this was, after all, just two years after WWII and the first year of the Cold War—but the military confirmed there were no tests being conducted near Mount Rainier that day. When Arnold described the crafts’ motion as similar to “a saucer if you skip it across water,” the media coined the now-ubiquitous phrase “flying saucer.”
Soon, other reports of a group of nine UFOs cropped up across the region, including sightings by a prospector on Mount Adams and the crew of a commercial flight in Idaho. The government never offered a credible explanation for the sightings. It simply claimed Arnold had seen a mirage or was hallucinating. But UFO mania had set in, and just a few weeks later, the infamous Roswell sighting would perpetuate the obsession.
VIDEO: UFO Sightings: Kenneth Arnold
2. Roswell, 1947
Jesse Marcel, head intelligence officer, who initially investigated and recovered some of the debris from the Roswell UFO site pictured in a 1947 newspaper reporting the incident at Roswell.
It’s the mother of all UFO sightings, but no object was actually observed flying in the Roswell incident. In the summer of 1947, rancher William “Mac” Brazel discovered mysterious debris in one of his New Mexico pastures, including metallic rods, chunks of plastic and unusual, papery scraps. After Brazel reported the wreckage, soldiers from nearby Roswell Army Air Force Base came to retrieve the materials. News headlines claimed that a “flying saucer” crashed in Roswell, but military officials said it was only a downed weather balloon.
Ever since, conspiracy theorists have been hard at work trying to prove the wreckage was extraterrestrial, with one man, Ray Santilli, going so far as to release a video in 1995 of an alien “dissection” purported to have taken place after the incident. (Santilli would admit in 2006 that it was a staged film, but he maintained that it was based on actual footage.)
As it turns out, the government was indeed covering something up—but it wasn’t aliens. The crashed weather balloon was, in fact, part of a top-secret military endeavor called Project Mogul, which launched high-altitude balloons carrying equipment used to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The Air Force provided plenty of proof in a 231-page report released in 1997 called “Case Closed: Final Report on the Roswell Crash.” Though the mystery has been thoroughly debunked, interest in the case has only grown, and Roswell’s tourism is heavily based around its famous so-called UFO sighting. The town is home to the International UFO Museum and Research Center, a spaceship-shaped McDonald’s and an annual UFO festival, held each summer.
VIDEO: UFO Sightings: Roswell
Read More – History’s Most Infamous UFO Sightings of the Modern Era
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