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ROSWELL & BEYOND...
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Six Early UFO-UAP Sitings
The Phantom ShipsTitus Livius Patavinus, known to us as Livy, was a great historian of the Ancient world, who wrote an epic chronicle of Rome. In fact, he was something of a celebrity academic of his day - the Roman equivalent of Simon Schama. His writings on Rome include a fascinating account of "many prodigies" spotted in 214 BC, including "phantom ships" that were apparently "seen gleaming in the sky". UFO-ologists still debate whether this was intended as a literal observation or an ominous metaphor.
The Battle FlameThe celebrated Roman historian and essayist Plutarch also chronicled some very strange, UFO-related goings-on. On the subject of a battle in 74 BC between a Roman army and the forces of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, he wrote how "with no apparent change of weather, the sky burst asunder and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour like molten silver." Thousands of onlookers, including King King Mithridates VI himself, confirmed the truth of the story.
Chariots In The SkyWe can turn to another account by an eminent, ancient scholar: Titus Flavius Josephus, who gave a now-famous description of a "miraculous phenomenon, defying belief" in the first century AD. Almost apologetically, he wrote that "what I am about to relate would, I imagine, have been deemed a fable, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses". And we can't blame him, given that the phenomenon itself involved "chariots and armed battalions hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities".
Angel HairOne curiously recurring aspect of UFO sightings is "angel hair", a sticky substance left behind by the apparent aliens. The phenomenon of angel hair has been around since at least 196 AD, when historian Cassius Dio recounted how a "fine rain resembling silver descended from a clear sky upon the Forum of Augutus". He actually collected some of the bizarre material and used it to plate some bronze coins. He reported that "they retained the same appearance for three days, but by the fourth day all the substance rubbed on them had disappeared."
The Nuremberg Spectacle Something very strange lit up the sky over Nuremberg in April 1561. According to a contemporary account, daybreak saw the heavens fill with garishly vivid objects, from "blood-red semi-circular arcs" to dark balls of "black ferrous colour" which started rushing back and forth and "fight among themselves". Eventually they fell onto the earth and "wasted away" with "immense smoke." Many citizens testified to seeing this "UFO battle" which was later commemorated in a woodcut engraving.
The Thunderous WashbasinAmong the great treasures of academic literature are the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. These annual records chronicled Korean life for centuries - an immense achievement by any measure. And among its pages is a startling account of a UFO which appeared in September 1609 in "clear and cloudless skies". It was described as looking like a "washbasin" but made a "thunderous sound" as it flew through the sky as swiftly as an arrow before disappearing into sparks.
The Battle FlameThe celebrated Roman historian and essayist Plutarch also chronicled some very strange, UFO-related goings-on. On the subject of a battle in 74 BC between a Roman army and the forces of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, he wrote how "with no apparent change of weather, the sky burst asunder and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour like molten silver." Thousands of onlookers, including King King Mithridates VI himself, confirmed the truth of the story.
Chariots In The SkyWe can turn to another account by an eminent, ancient scholar: Titus Flavius Josephus, who gave a now-famous description of a "miraculous phenomenon, defying belief" in the first century AD. Almost apologetically, he wrote that "what I am about to relate would, I imagine, have been deemed a fable, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses". And we can't blame him, given that the phenomenon itself involved "chariots and armed battalions hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities".
Angel HairOne curiously recurring aspect of UFO sightings is "angel hair", a sticky substance left behind by the apparent aliens. The phenomenon of angel hair has been around since at least 196 AD, when historian Cassius Dio recounted how a "fine rain resembling silver descended from a clear sky upon the Forum of Augutus". He actually collected some of the bizarre material and used it to plate some bronze coins. He reported that "they retained the same appearance for three days, but by the fourth day all the substance rubbed on them had disappeared."
The Nuremberg Spectacle Something very strange lit up the sky over Nuremberg in April 1561. According to a contemporary account, daybreak saw the heavens fill with garishly vivid objects, from "blood-red semi-circular arcs" to dark balls of "black ferrous colour" which started rushing back and forth and "fight among themselves". Eventually they fell onto the earth and "wasted away" with "immense smoke." Many citizens testified to seeing this "UFO battle" which was later commemorated in a woodcut engraving.
The Thunderous WashbasinAmong the great treasures of academic literature are the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. These annual records chronicled Korean life for centuries - an immense achievement by any measure. And among its pages is a startling account of a UFO which appeared in September 1609 in "clear and cloudless skies". It was described as looking like a "washbasin" but made a "thunderous sound" as it flew through the sky as swiftly as an arrow before disappearing into sparks.
What Really Happened at Roswell?
Behind the rumors of America's most infamous UFO incident
© History Channel https://www.history.com/news/roswell-ufo-aliens-what-happenedAdam JanosUpdated: Jan 8, 2021Original: Dec 17, 2019
In the annals of American UFO history, few incidents have inspired as much fascination—and speculation—as the one in Roswell, New Mexico.
It began in the summer of 1947, at the dawn of the Cold War, when the U.S. Army Air Forces sent out a shocker of a press release, announcing they’d recovered a “flying disc” from a ranch near Roswell. More than 70 years later, the incident remains a defining aspect of the area’s identity: The town boasts a UFO museum and research center, a flying saucer-inspired McDonald’s, alien-themed streetlights, even an extraterrestrial “family” stranded in a broken-down UFO on the side of State Route 285, looking for a jump-start.
But behind all the UFO mania lies an uneasy truth. The events that transpired that summer are anything but clear-cut, with admitted coverups and conflicting explanations: It was a saucer! It was a spy craft! It was the Soviets! And new ones are still emerging.
Sometime between mid-June and early July 1947, rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel found wreckage on his sizable property in Lincoln County, New Mexico, approximately 75 miles north of Roswell. Several “flying disc” and “flying saucer” stories had already appeared in the national press that summer, leading Brazel to believe the wreckage—which included rubber strips, tinfoil, and thick paper—might be something of that ilk. He brought some of the material to Sheriff George Wilcox of Roswell, who in turn brought it to the attention of Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). The next day, the RAAF released a statement, writing that, “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.” According to that statement, Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer, oversaw the RAAF’s investigation of the crash site and the recovered materials. The following day, the Roswell Daily Record ran a story about the crash and the RAAF’s astonishing claim. But U.S. Army officials quickly reversed themselves on the “flying saucer” claim, stating that the found debris was actually from a weather balloon, releasing photographs of Major Marcel posing with pieces of the supposed weather balloon debris as proof.
For decades, many UFO researchers were skeptical of the government’s changed account, and in 1994, the U.S. Air Force released a report in which they conceded that the “weather balloon” story had been bogus. According to the 1994 explanation, the wreckage came from a spy device created for an until-then classified project called Project Mogul. The device—a connected string of high-altitude balloons equipped with microphones—was designed to float furtively over the USSR, detecting sound waves at a stealth distance. These balloons would ostensibly monitor the Soviet government’s attempts at testing their own atomic bomb. Because Project Mogul was a covert operation, the new report claimed, a false explanation of the crash was necessary to prevent giving away details of their spy work. Other elements of the Roswell story—namely that some eyewitnesses claimed that there were alien bodies taken from the site—were explained as fallen parachute-test dummies in a more extensive follow-up report in 1997.Roger Launius, a historian and retired curator for the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, says those two reports close most of the remaining questions about Roswell.“This story has been resolved,” Launius says. “Has absolutely every question been answered? I can’t say that. But I’m not sure that there are significant holes.” “You do not divulge state secrets in the context of national security… My surmise is they probably saw [the initial flying saucer explanation] as a useful cover story.” Donald Schmitt, a UFO researcher who has spent nearly three decades investigating the Roswell incident and is the co-founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, says that explanation makes little sense. The “flying saucer” story, he contends, was so ostentatious that it was bound to draw attention to the area, with its sensitive military operations at the time. Doing so would seem highly counter to the interests of the War Department. “Two hours west of Roswell the first atomic bomb was detonated. You had ongoing atomic research at Los Alamos. You had all this testing of captured German V-2 rockets at White Sands. And at Roswell, you had the first atomic bomb squadron headquartered,” Schmitt says. “The thought that they would have intentionally set up any type of publicity as a distraction? If anything, they needed less attention.” Another questionable theory—advanced by the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base—states that the crashed flying vehicle was neither extraterrestrial nor the work of U.S. spies. Rather, it was an unconventional plan to induce widespread American panic, implemented by Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin.An unnamed source who worked as an engineer at Area 51 for the defense contractor EG&G told the book’s author Annie Jacobsen, a veteran national security journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee, that the program had been designed by Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele. According to the source, adolescent children were deformed by the Soviets to resemble aliens and then deployed in an aircraft to fly over New Mexico. According to this book, Stalin’s “plan was for the children to climb out and be mistaken for visitors from Mars. Panic would ensue… [and] America’s early-warning radar system would be overwhelmed with sightings of other ‘UFOs.’” That theory could go some way in explaining the wreckage described by Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of the intelligence officer named in the initial press report. According to Marcel, Jr.’s book, The Roswell Legacy, his father brought some of UFO wreckage home, allowing his son to handle the debated debris before he took it to his base.Marcel Jr. wrote that the material was metallic and “I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols—squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like.” Marcel Jr. was 11 years old at the time, the Cold War only just beginning. Could the young boy have been reading the Cyrillic alphabet for the first time, allowing his imagination to do the rest? On this, Schmitt and Launius agree: It’s not likely. “There’s no evidence in any Soviet archives that there were such experiments as this,” says Launius. “And if the intent was to generate panic, it failed utterly miserably.”
Sometime between mid-June and early July 1947, rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel found wreckage on his sizable property in Lincoln County, New Mexico, approximately 75 miles north of Roswell. Several “flying disc” and “flying saucer” stories had already appeared in the national press that summer, leading Brazel to believe the wreckage—which included rubber strips, tinfoil, and thick paper—might be something of that ilk. He brought some of the material to Sheriff George Wilcox of Roswell, who in turn brought it to the attention of Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). The next day, the RAAF released a statement, writing that, “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.” According to that statement, Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer, oversaw the RAAF’s investigation of the crash site and the recovered materials. The following day, the Roswell Daily Record ran a story about the crash and the RAAF’s astonishing claim. But U.S. Army officials quickly reversed themselves on the “flying saucer” claim, stating that the found debris was actually from a weather balloon, releasing photographs of Major Marcel posing with pieces of the supposed weather balloon debris as proof.
For decades, many UFO researchers were skeptical of the government’s changed account, and in 1994, the U.S. Air Force released a report in which they conceded that the “weather balloon” story had been bogus. According to the 1994 explanation, the wreckage came from a spy device created for an until-then classified project called Project Mogul. The device—a connected string of high-altitude balloons equipped with microphones—was designed to float furtively over the USSR, detecting sound waves at a stealth distance. These balloons would ostensibly monitor the Soviet government’s attempts at testing their own atomic bomb. Because Project Mogul was a covert operation, the new report claimed, a false explanation of the crash was necessary to prevent giving away details of their spy work. Other elements of the Roswell story—namely that some eyewitnesses claimed that there were alien bodies taken from the site—were explained as fallen parachute-test dummies in a more extensive follow-up report in 1997.Roger Launius, a historian and retired curator for the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, says those two reports close most of the remaining questions about Roswell.“This story has been resolved,” Launius says. “Has absolutely every question been answered? I can’t say that. But I’m not sure that there are significant holes.” “You do not divulge state secrets in the context of national security… My surmise is they probably saw [the initial flying saucer explanation] as a useful cover story.” Donald Schmitt, a UFO researcher who has spent nearly three decades investigating the Roswell incident and is the co-founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, says that explanation makes little sense. The “flying saucer” story, he contends, was so ostentatious that it was bound to draw attention to the area, with its sensitive military operations at the time. Doing so would seem highly counter to the interests of the War Department. “Two hours west of Roswell the first atomic bomb was detonated. You had ongoing atomic research at Los Alamos. You had all this testing of captured German V-2 rockets at White Sands. And at Roswell, you had the first atomic bomb squadron headquartered,” Schmitt says. “The thought that they would have intentionally set up any type of publicity as a distraction? If anything, they needed less attention.” Another questionable theory—advanced by the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base—states that the crashed flying vehicle was neither extraterrestrial nor the work of U.S. spies. Rather, it was an unconventional plan to induce widespread American panic, implemented by Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin.An unnamed source who worked as an engineer at Area 51 for the defense contractor EG&G told the book’s author Annie Jacobsen, a veteran national security journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee, that the program had been designed by Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele. According to the source, adolescent children were deformed by the Soviets to resemble aliens and then deployed in an aircraft to fly over New Mexico. According to this book, Stalin’s “plan was for the children to climb out and be mistaken for visitors from Mars. Panic would ensue… [and] America’s early-warning radar system would be overwhelmed with sightings of other ‘UFOs.’” That theory could go some way in explaining the wreckage described by Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of the intelligence officer named in the initial press report. According to Marcel, Jr.’s book, The Roswell Legacy, his father brought some of UFO wreckage home, allowing his son to handle the debated debris before he took it to his base.Marcel Jr. wrote that the material was metallic and “I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols—squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like.” Marcel Jr. was 11 years old at the time, the Cold War only just beginning. Could the young boy have been reading the Cyrillic alphabet for the first time, allowing his imagination to do the rest? On this, Schmitt and Launius agree: It’s not likely. “There’s no evidence in any Soviet archives that there were such experiments as this,” says Launius. “And if the intent was to generate panic, it failed utterly miserably.”
Web Resources
Print
- HISTORY CHANNEL OVERVIEW: https://www.history.com/ufo-sightings-location-map
- CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF SIGHTINGS (partial): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings
- FAMOUS UFO SIGHTINGS: https://www.history.com/news/historys-most-infamous-ufo-sightings
- FIVE FAMOUS UFO SIGHTINGS: https://www.travelchannel.com/shows/expedition-unknown-hunt-for-extra-terrestrials/articles/5-famous-ufo-sightings-across-the-world
- CREDIBLE MODERN UFO SIGHTINGS: https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-sightings-encounters-credibility-video-1371313
- BRITANNICA ENTRY (Overview): https://www.britannica.com/topic/unidentified-flying-object
- BBC (with focus on the film NOPE and the 75th anniversary of Roswell): https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220714-the-ufo-sightings-that-swept-the-us
- ROSWELL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/the-mysterious-roswell-ufo-incident-of-1947/
- ROSWELL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/08/roswell-flying-saucer-ufo/
- CIA STUDIES HISTORY: https://sgp.fas.org/library/ciaufo.html
- GOVERNMENT STUDIES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/06/04/ufo-report-explained-government/
- CONGRESSIONAL PANEL 2022: https://www.space.com/future-ufo-research-after-congress-hearing
- CALL FOR MORE STUDIES: https://www.snexplores.org/article/ufo-science-research-uap-congress-pentagon-nasa
- SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ANALYSIS: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-weigh-in-on-pentagon-ufo-report/
VIDEO
- HISTORY OF UFO SIGHTINGS (BuzzFeed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd9387qiP40
- TOP 5 SHOCKING UFO SIGHTINGS IN THE USA (History Channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR4mDKwagAA
- TOP 5 UFO SIGHTINGS (The Proof Is Out There, History Channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZZd2u9Pm4
- ROSWELL OVERVIEW (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGsUUvOXxtY
- ROSWELL OVERVIEW (Smithsonian Air and Space Museum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJWblpzEjA
- TOP 20 UFO SIGHTINGS (WatchMojo.com): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq2OIBSaVkE
