Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased in January 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:
- To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and
- To scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens, or non occupied alien probes from other planets visiting Earth.
Black triangles are a class of unidentified flying object (UFO) with certain common features which have reportedly been observed during the 20th and 21st centuries. Media reports of black triangles originally came from the United States and United Kingdom.
In late December 1980, there was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, which have become linked with claims of UFO landings. The events occurred just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the United States Air Force (USAF). USAF personnel, including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claimed to see things they described as a UFO sighting.
The Book of the Damned was the first published nonfiction work by American author Charles Fort. Concerning various types of anomalous phenomena including UFOs, strange falls of both organic and inorganic materials from the sky, odd weather patterns, the possible existence of creatures generally believed to be mythological, disappearances of people, and many other phenomena, the book is considered to be the first of the specific topic of anomalistics.
The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas, in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States and is regarded as one of the first great UFO cases in that country. The Lubbock Lights were investigated by the U.S. Air Force in 1951. The Air Force initially believed the lights were caused by a type of bird called a plover, but eventually concluded that the lights "weren't birds... but they weren't spaceships...the [Lubbock Lights] have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon." However, to maintain the anonymity of the scientist who had provided the explanation, the Air Force refrained from providing any details regarding their explanation for the lights.
Angel hair or siliceous cotton is a sticky, fibrous substance reported in connection with UFO sightings, or manifestations of the Virgin Mary. It has been described as being like a cobweb or a jelly.
On 23 January 1974 on the Berwyn Mountains in Llandrillo, Merionethshire, Wales, lights and noises were observed that were alleged to be related to a UFO sighting on Cadair Berwyn and Cadair Bronwen. Scientific evidence indicated that the event was generated by an earthquake combined with sightings of a bright meteor widely observed over Wales and northern England at the time.
The Mariana UFO Incident occurred in August 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The film footage of the sighting is believed to be among the first ever taken of what came to be called an unidentified flying object, and was investigated by the U.S. Air Force.
Nicholas "Nick" Redfern is a British best-selling author, journalist, cryptozoologist and ufologist.
Identifying unidentified flying objects is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the unknown object. Observations and subsequent reporting are often made by those untrained in astronomy, atmospheric phenomena, aeronautics, physics, and perception. Nevertheless, most officially investigated UFO sightings, such as from the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, have been identified as being due to honest misidentifications of natural phenomena, aircraft, or other prosaic explanations. In early U.S. Air Force attempts to explain UFO sightings, unexplained sightings routinely numbered over one in five reports. However, in early 1953, right after the CIA's Robertson Panel, percentages of unexplained sightings dropped precipitously, usually being only a few percent in any given year. When Project Blue Book closed down in 1970, only 6% of all cases were classified as being truly unidentified.
Operation Thunder Child is a 1999 novel by British civil servant Nick Pope. Since Pope had worked for the British Ministry of Defence on the subject of unidentified flying objects, the book had to be cleared by the Ministry prior to publication.
Flying Saucer Working Party was the name of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) first "official study into UFOs", which has its roots in a study commissioned in 1950 by the MOD’s then Chief Scientific Adviser, the eminent radar scientist Sir Henry Tizard. As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the Department set up what writer Nick Pope has described as "arguably the most marvellously-named committee in the history of the civil service".
The Levelland UFO case occurred on November 2–3, 1957, in and around the small town of Levelland, Texas. Levelland, which in 1957 had a population of about 10,000, is located west of Lubbock on the flat prairie of the Texas South Plains. The case is considered by ufologists to be one of the most impressive in UFO history, mainly because of the large number of witnesses involved over a relatively short period of time. However, both the US Air Force and UFO skeptics have described the incident as being caused by either ball lightning or a severe electrical storm.
Project Condign was a secret UFO study undertaken by the British Government's Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) between 1997 and 2000.
Jimmy Carter reported seeing an unidentified flying object while at Leary, Georgia, in 1969.
The Gorman UFO dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident. It occurred on October 1, 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, and involved George F. Gorman, a pilot with the North Dakota Air National Guard. USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the Gorman Dogfight was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. However, in 1949 the US Air Force concluded that the Gorman Dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon.
