Roswell UFO incident

Who: The United States Armed Forces.

What: A reported UFO crash in Roswell.

Where: Roswell, Chaves County, New Mexico, USA.

Why: Probably a weather balloon.

When: July 8^th, 1947.

“Babies have big heads and big eyes, and tiny little bodies with tiny little arms and legs. So did the aliens at Roswell! I rest my case.” – William Shatner

On July 7^th, 1947, an object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. That definitely happened. But whether it was an alien spacecraft or a military weather balloon is up to the reader. On July 8^th, Walter Haut, the Roswell Army Air Field public information officer, issued a press release, saying US Army personnel had recovered a ‘flying disk’. Later that day, Roger Ramey, Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force stated a weather balloon had been recovered. A press conference was held, featuring debris that seemed consistent with a weather balloon. However, in 1978, ufologist Santon T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel, who was one of those that recovered of the debris. Marcel claimed the military had covered up an alien spacecraft. In February 1980 the National Enquirer ran its own interview with Marcel, and before long the story had ballooned (geddit), claiming as many as 11 crash sites and alien autopsies. To this day, Roswell sits right on the fence between scepticism and belief.

Further reading:

http://www.roswellufomuseum.com/incident.html

http://vault.fbi.gov/Roswell%20UFO

Photo of an alleged UFO taken in July 1952.