1.
Condon Committee
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The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968. According to a critic of the Report, it is the most influential public document concerning the scientific status of this UFO problem. Hence, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must make reference to the Condon Report, Blue Book had come under increasing criticism in the 1960s. The Air Force did not want to continue its studies but did not want a cessation of studies to provoke additional charges of a cover-up, UFOs had become such a controversial issue that no other government agency was willing to take on further UFO studies. Air Force should work with a few selected universities to provide teams to study UFOs. The Committee suggested that about 100 well-documented UFO sightings should be studied annually, at a Congressional UFO hearing on April 5,1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown defended the Air Forces UFO studies and repeated the OBrien Committees call for more studies. Hynek repeated his call for a panel of physical and social scientists to examine the UFO problem critically for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem exists. Shortly after the hearing, the Air Force announced it was seeking one or more universities to undertake a study of UFOs, the Air Force wanted to have several groups, but it took some time to find even a single school willing to accept the Air Forces offer. McDonald suggested their own campuses, Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, all were judged too closely allied with one position or another. Walter Orr Roberts, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in the summer of 1966, Condon agreed to consider the Air Forces offer. He was among the best known and most distinguished scientists of his time, Condons tenacious encounters with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and other government Loyalty Boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him almost legendary among fellow scientists. On Condons behalf, Robert J. Low, an assistant dean of the graduate program, explored faculty reaction to the proposed project and found it mixed. He tried to reassure those who found the enterprise unworthy of scientific investigation, Low told the Denver Post that the project had met the Universitys acceptance threshold by the narrowest of margins and was accepted largely because it was difficult to say no to the Air Force. Some have suggested that finances were factor in Colorados decision to accept the Air Forces offer of $313,000 for the project. Condon dismissed this suggestion, noting that $313,000 was a rather modest budget for an undertaking scheduled to last more than a year with a staff of over a dozen, the Air Force announced its selection of Condon and the University of Colorado in October 1966. Several other scientists or experts served in part-time and temporary roles or as consultants, in November 1966, retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe and Richard H. Hall, both of NICAP, briefed the panel. They agreed to share NICAPs research files and to improve the collection of UFO reports, the Committee also secured help from APRO, another civilian UFO research group. The Committee moved slowly, hampered by disagreements about the use of funds, by hiring people with no prior position on UFOs, the Committee staff lacked expertise and subject matter expertise
2.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
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The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public right of access to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level, the Act implements a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election, developed by Dr David Clark as a 1997 White Paper. The final version of the Act is believed by Ben Robertson to have been diluted from that proposed while Labour was in opposition, the full provisions of the act came into force on 1 January 2005. The Act is the responsibility of the Lord Chancellors Department, the Act led to the renaming of the Data Protection Commissioner, who is now known as the Information Commissioner. The Office of the Information Commissioner oversees the operation of the Act, a second freedom of information law is in existence in the UK, the Freedom of Information Act 2002. It was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2002, to public bodies over which the Holyrood parliament. For these institutions, it fulfils the same purpose as the 2000 Act, around 120,000 requests are made each year. Private citizens made 60% of them, with businesses and journalists accounting for 20% and 10% respectively, journalists requests took up more of officials time than businesses and individuals requests. The Act cost £35.5 million in 2005, the act implements what was a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election. Before its introduction, there had no right of access to government by the general public. The act was preceded by a 1998 white paper, entitled Your Right to Know by Dr David Clark, the white paper was met with widespread enthusiasm, and was described at the time as being almost too good to be true by one advocate of freedom of information legislation. The final act was more limited in scope than the initial white paper. Public Authorities, publicly owned companies and designated bodies performing public functions, in principle, the freedom of information act applies to all public authorities within the United Kingdom, a full list of public authorities for the purposes of the act is included in Schedule 1. A few government departments are expressly excluded from the scope of the act, as government departments are closed and created, the act must be continually updated. It is important to note that for public authorities listed under Schedule 1 the act has limited effect. For example, the BBC is subject to the act only for information which is not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, to prevent its journalistic activities from possible compromise. The scope of this provision was considered in the recent High Court decision of BBC v Sugar an internal BBC document examining the BBC coverage of the Middle East for potential bias. The appellants in that case argued that the document had been produced for both operational and journalistic reasons, and so should not be covered by the partial exemption provided in the act
3.
Sheffield Hallam University
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Sheffield Hallam University is a public university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The university is the eighth largest university in the UK with 31,485 students,4,494 staff and 708 courses, the day-to-day running was controlled by the local council, whilst the Board of Trade in London appointed the head. Tuition began in a 60x40ft rented room off Glossop Road, in 1850 the School of Design was renamed Sheffield School of Art. In 1905 the City of Sheffield Training College on Collegiate Crescent admitted its first 90 students, in 1967 the Owen Building was constructed. Built in a functional 1960s design, it has since been modernised, in 1969 the Sheffield School of Design merged with the citys College of Technology to form Sheffield Polytechnic. In 1976 Sheffield Polytechnic merged with the two teacher training colleges and was renamed Sheffield City Polytechnic. In 1987 Sheffield City Polytechnic became a member of the Northern Consortium. In 1992 Sheffield City Polytechnic became Sheffield Hallam University, with the right to award its own degrees, in 2005 SHU was reorganised into four faculties. The new Faculty of Development and Society, with an emphasis on people, places and spaces, brought together education, geography, humanities, law, and social sciences. At the same time, with the intention of developing research and teaching in the new Faculty of Health and Wellbeing. The building that had designed and constructed to house the National Centre for Popular Music became the universitys students union building. The Nelson Mandela Building, the students union building, was sold and has since been demolished. In 2007 SHU took over the teaching of nursing and midwifery from the University of Sheffield and these activities are now based at the Collegiate Crescent Campus. The following year the Psalter Lane campus was closed, and the transferred to the City Campus. The £26 million energy-efficient Furnival Building opened in September, the building, which includes teaching spaces and an art gallery has been described as the impressive new entry point to the campus. Winston has a history in academia, being a full-time faculty member at Imperial College London for the majority of his career. SHU is the partner for Higher Futures, the Lifelong Learning Network for South Yorkshire, North Derbyshire. SHU received a First Class award and was ranked 15th out of 151 universities in the People & Planet University League 2015 which assesses universities on their environmental credentials, nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed, Labour Party Peer
4.
British UFO Research Association
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The British UFO Research Association or BUFORA is a UK organisation formerly registered as BUFORA Ltd, dedicated to investigating UFO phenomena in the British Isles. The organisation has around 1,000 members, in 1991 the book UFO Encyclopedia was compiled for the group by Major Sir Patrick Wall. BUFORA investigates over 400 cases a year, with the organisation reporting 95% of them as hoaxes and they run witness support groups for those who believe they have encountered extra terrestrials. The organisation has held a conference at Sheffield Hallam University since 1987 and hold meetings across the country. They have been critics of the UK governments Freedom of Information Act as it relates to UFOs. An entry in the UFO Encyclopedia, which was a sighting confirmed as genuine by BUFORA, was found to be a hoax. The supposed contactee, who claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the town of Warminster, in 1995 the group were the only official UFO organisation to endorse a film, purportedly by the US government, showing an alien autopsy at Roswell
5.
Ball lightning
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Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter, though usually associated with thunderstorms, the phenomenon lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many early reports claim that the ball explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences. Until the 1960s, most scientists treated reports of ball lightning skeptically, laboratory experiments can produce effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but how these relate to the natural phenomenon remains unclear. Scientists have proposed many hypotheses about ball lightning over the centuries, Scientific data on natural ball lightning are scarce, owing to its infrequency and unpredictability. The presumption of its existence depends on reported sightings, and has therefore produced somewhat inconsistent findings. Owing to inconsistencies and to the lack of data, the true nature of ball lightning remains unknown. The first ever optical spectrum of what appears to have been an event was published in January 2014. It has been suggested that lightning could be the source of the legends that describe luminous balls. In a 1960 study, 5% of the population of the Earth reported having witnessed ball lightning, another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases. From that time, those fires which frequently appear on the surface of the ocean were called the fire of Castor, when two were seen at the same time, it announced the return of calm, when only one, it was the presage of a dreadful storm. This species of fire is seen by sailors, and is a species of ignis fatuus. This account, however, shares more commonalities with the St. Elmos fire phenomenon, another early description was reported during the Great Thunderstorm at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638. Four people died and approximately 60 were injured when, during a severe storm, large stones from the church walls were hurled into the ground and through large wooden beams. The ball of fire allegedly smashed the pews and many windows, the ball of fire reportedly divided into two segments, one exiting through a window by smashing it open, the other disappearing somewhere inside the church. The explanation at the time, because of the fire and sulfur smell, was that the ball of fire was the devil or the flames of hell. Later, some blamed the incident on two people who had been playing cards in the pew during the sermon, thereby incurring Gods wrath. By this explosion the main top-mast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel, five men were knocked down and one of them very bruised
6.
Black triangle UFO
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Black triangles are a class of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, 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, the aircraft may be related to the rumored USAF Aurora aircraft developmental program. Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities, sightings usually take place at night. These objects are described as having pulsing colored lights that appear at each corner of the triangle. Black triangle UFOs have been reported to be visible to radar and this entire Belgian UFO wave, however, has been disputed by skeptics. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently reported as black craft, often triangular. These plasma formations also have the effect through magnetic, electric or electromagnetic, local fields of this type have been medically proven to cause responses in the temporal lobes of the human brain. These result in the observer sustaining his or her own vivid and this is suggested to be a key factor in influencing the more extreme reports found in the media and are clearly believed by the victims. On March 30,1993, multiple witnesses across south-west and west England saw a black triangle at low speeds. Analysis of the sightings by Nick Pope concluded that the object moved in a course from Cornwall to Shropshire over a period of approximately 6 hours. The sightings report clearly visible objects over densely populated areas and highways, mostly in the United States and Britain, in February and March 2014, an aircraft matching the black triangle description was photographed multiple times over Kansas and Texas in daylight. In February 2014, an amateur photographer Jeff Templin snapped pictures of an aircraft while photographing wildlife in Kansas. On Mar 10,2014 Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett photographed a triangular shaped aircraft giving off a long contrail over Amarillo, bill Sweetman, Graham Warwick, and Guy Norris of Aviation Week all agree that the photos show something real. The Kenosha UFO wave began in December 2016, the events of 17 February were documented by multiple groups of witnesses. All of the reports consist of a dark triangular objects in the sky with blinking white and red lights. The craft was seen on 19 January 2017 at around 5,00 am barely hovering above the ground. The object was described as dark on the bottom with lights, other sightings include 28 December 2016 at around 8,00 pm and 24 January 2017 at around 9,00 pm. The Belgian UFO wave began in November 1989, the events of 29 November were documented by over thirty different groups of witnesses, and three separate groups of police officers
7.
Plasma (physics)
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Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, the others being solid, liquid, and gas. Yet unlike these three states of matter, plasma does not naturally exist on the Earth under normal surface conditions, the term was first introduced by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s. However, true plasma production is from the separation of these ions and electrons that produces an electric field. Based on the environmental temperature and density either partially ionised or fully ionised forms of plasma may be produced. The positive charge in ions is achieved by stripping away electrons from atomic nuclei, the number of electrons removed is related to either the increase in temperature or the local density of other ionised matter. Plasma may be the most abundant form of matter in the universe, although this is currently tentative based on the existence. Plasma is mostly associated with the Sun and stars, extending to the rarefied intracluster medium, Plasma was first identified in a Crookes tube, and so described by Sir William Crookes in 1879. The nature of the Crookes tube cathode ray matter was identified by British physicist Sir J. J. The term plasma was coined by Irving Langmuir in 1928, perhaps because the glowing discharge molds itself to the shape of the Crookes tube and we shall use the name plasma to describe this region containing balanced charges of ions and electrons. Plasma is a neutral medium of unbound positive and negative particles. Although these particles are unbound, they are not ‘free’ in the sense of not experiencing forces, in turn this governs collective behavior with many degrees of variation. The average number of particles in the Debye sphere is given by the plasma parameter, bulk interactions, The Debye screening length is short compared to the physical size of the plasma. This criterion means that interactions in the bulk of the plasma are more important than those at its edges, when this criterion is satisfied, the plasma is quasineutral. Plasma frequency, The electron plasma frequency is compared to the electron-neutral collision frequency. When this condition is valid, electrostatic interactions dominate over the processes of ordinary gas kinetics, for plasma to exist, ionization is necessary. The term plasma density by itself refers to the electron density, that is. The degree of ionization of a plasma is the proportion of atoms that have lost or gained electrons, even a partially ionized gas in which as little as 1% of the particles are ionized can have the characteristics of a plasma. The degree of ionization, α, is defined as α = n i n i + n n, where n i is the number density of ions and n n is the number density of neutral atoms
8.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
9.
Unidentified flying object
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An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, UFOs are often identified after their sighting. Sometimes, however, UFOs cannot be identified because of the low quality of evidence related to their sightings, during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as flying saucers or flying discs. The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as An unidentified flying object, a flying saucer. The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe, the acronym UFO was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAFs official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, Obviously the term flying saucer is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape, for this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name, unidentified flying objects. Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include flying flapjack, flying disc, unexplained flying discs, unidentifiable object, the phrase flying saucer had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph, at the time, he claimed he described the objects flying in a saucer-like fashion, leading to newspaper accounts of flying saucers and flying discs. In popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft, between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. The term Ufology is used to describe the efforts of those who study reports. UFOs have become a prevalent theme in culture, and the social phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and psychology. Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history, an example is Halleys Comet, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC. Such sightings throughout history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. On January 25,1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word saucer in association with a UFO. In April 1897, thousands of people reported seeing airships in various parts of the United States, scores of people even reported talking to the pilots. Thomas Edison was asked his opinion, and said, You can take it from me that it is a pure fake, the largest had an apparent size of about six Suns, he said
10.
The Guardian
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The Guardian is a British daily newspaper, known from 1821 until 1959 as the Manchester Guardian. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, the Scott Trust became a limited company in 2008, with a constitution to maintain the same protections for The Guardian. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than to the benefit of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian is edited by Katharine Viner, who succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. In 2016, The Guardians print edition had a daily circulation of roughly 162,000 copies in the country, behind The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper has an online UK edition as well as two international websites, Guardian Australia and Guardian US, the newspapers online edition was the fifth most widely read in the world in October 2014, with over 42.6 million readers. Its combined print and online editions reach nearly 9 million British readers, notable scoops include the 2011 News International phone hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered English teenager Milly Dowlers phone. The investigation led to the closure of the UKs biggest selling Sunday newspaper, and one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, in 2016, it led the investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing the then British Prime Minister David Camerons links to offshore bank accounts. The Guardian has been named Newspaper of the Year four times at the annual British Press Awards, the paper is still occasionally referred to by its nickname of The Grauniad, given originally for the purported frequency of its typographical errors. The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle and they launched their paper after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they better than those that do. When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, the prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty. Warmly advocate the cause of Reform, endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and. Support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, in 1825 the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828. The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian the foul prostitute, the Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labours claims. The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators –, if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. CP Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised and he was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylors son in 1907. Under Scott, the moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting William Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886
11.
Wired (magazine)
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Wired is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, several spin-offs have been launched including, Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan and Wired Germany. In its earliest colophons, Wired credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as its patron saint, from its beginning, the strongest influence on the magazines editorial outlook came from techno-utopian co-founder Stewart Brand and his associate Kevin Kelly. From 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News had separate owners, however, Wired News remained responsible for republishing Wired magazines content online due to an agreement when Condé Nast purchased the magazine. In 2006, Condé Nast bought Wired News for $25 million, the founding designers were John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr, beginning with a 1991 prototype and continuing through the first five years of publication, 1993–98. Wired, which touted itself as the Rolling Stone of technology, a great success at its launch, it was lauded for its vision, originality, innovation and cultural impact. In its first four years, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and one for Design. The founding executive editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, was an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review, six authors of the first Wired issue had written for Whole Earth Review, most notably Bruce Sterling and Stewart Brand. However, the first issue did contain a few references to the Internet, including online-dating and Internet sex, the last page, a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was written in the style of an e-mail message, but contained obviously fake, non-standard email addresses. Wired was among the first magazines to list the email address of its authors and contributors, associate publisher Kathleen Lyman was brought on board to launch Wired with an advertising base of major technology and consumer advertisers. The magazine was followed by a companion website HotWired, a book publishing division, HardWired, a Japanese edition. Wired UK was relaunched in April 2009, in 1994, John Battelle, co-founding editor, commissioned Jules Marshall to write a piece on the Zippies. The cover story broke records for being one of the most publicized stories of the year and was used to promote Wireds HotWired news service, HotWired spawned websites Webmonkey, the search engine HotBot, and a weblog, Suck. com. In June 1998, the magazine launched an index, The Wired Index. The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded closely to that of the dot-com bubble, in 1996, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures attempted to take the company public with an IPO. The initial attempt had to be withdrawn in the face of a downturn in the stock market, the second try was also unsuccessful. Rossetto and Metcalfe lost control of Wired Ventures to financial investors Providence Equity Partners in May 1998, Wired was purchased by Advance Publications, who assigned it to Advances subsidiary, New York-based publisher Condé Nast Publications. Wired survived the bubble and found new direction under editor-in-chief Chris Anderson in 2001
12.
Ufology
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Ufology is the study of reports, visual records, physical evidence, and other phenomena related to unidentified flying objects. UFOs have been subject to investigations over the years by governments, independent groups. However, ufology, as a field, is rejected by modern academia and is considered a pseudoscience, the term derives from UFO, which is pronounced as an acronym, and the suffix -logy, which comes from the Ancient Greek λογία. This article was printed eight years after Edward J. Ruppelt of the United States Air Force coined the word UFO in 1951, rainier, Washington on June 24,1947. Media hype in the late 1940s and early 1950s following the Arnold sighting brought the concept of flying saucers to the public audience, as the publics preoccupation in UFOs grew, along with the number of reported sightings, the United States military began to take notice of the phenomenon. The UFO explosion of the early post-war era coincides with the escalation of the Cold War, the U. S. military feared that secret aircraft of the Soviet Union, possibly developed from captured German technology, were behind the reported sightings. If correct, the causing the sightings were thus of importance to national security. It also recommended the termination of the USAF special unit Project Blue Book, as the U. S. government ceased officially studying UFO sightings, the same became true for most governments of the world. A notable exception is France, which maintains the GEIPAN, formerly known as GEPAN and SEPRA. During the Cold War, British, Canadian, Danish, Italian, britains Ministry of Defence ceased accepting any new reports as of 2010. Ufology has generally not been embraced by academia as a field of study, even though UFOs were, during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Even among scientifically inclined UFO research efforts, data collecting is often done by amateur investigators, ufology is characterized as a partial or total pseudoscience, which many ufologists reject. Stanton Friedman considers the attitude of mainstream academics as arrogant and dismissive. Denzler states that the fear of ridicule and a loss of status has prevented scientists of pursuing a public interest in UFOs, J. Allen Hyneks also commented, Ridicule is not part of the scientific method and people should not be taught that it is. Hynek said of the frequent dismissal of UFO reports by astronomers that the critics knew little about the sightings, Peter A. Sturrock suggests that a lack of funding is a major factor in the institutional lack of interest in UFOs. Scientific UFO research suffers from the fact that the phenomena under observation do not usually make appearances at a time. Ufologist Diana Palmer Hoyt argues, The UFO problem seems to bear a resemblance to problems in meteorology than in physics. The phenomena are observed, occur episodically, are not reproducible and they are not experiments that can be replicated at will at the laboratory bench under controlled conditions
13.
Merkabah mysticism
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For the modern Israeli main battle tank see Merkava. Merkabah/Merkavah mysticism is a school of early Jewish mysticism, c, a major text in this tradition is the Maaseh Merkabah. The noun merkabah thing to ride in, cart is derived from the consonantal root r-k-b with the meaning to ride. However, when left untranslated, in English the Hebrew term merkabah relates to the throne-chariot of God in prophetic visions. It is most closely associated with the vision in Ezekiel chapter 1 of the vehicle driven by four hayyot, each of which has four wings and the four faces of a man, lion, ox. According to the verses in Ezekiel and its attendant commentaries, his vision consists of a made of many heavenly beings driven by the Likeness of a Man. The base structure of the chariot is composed of four beings and these beings are called the living creatures. The bodies of the creatures are like that of a human being, the faces are that of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. Since there are four angels and each has four faces, there are a total of sixteen faces, each Hayyot angel also has four wings. Two of these wings spread across the length of the chariot and this creates a sort of box of wings that forms the perimeter of the chariot. With the remaining two wings, each angel covers its own body, below, but not attached to, the feet of the Hayyot angels are other angels that are shaped like wheels. These wheel angels, which are described as a wheel inside of a wheel, are called Ophanim אופנים and these wheels are not directly under the chariot but are nearby and along its perimeter. The angel with the face of the man is always on the east side, the Likeness of a Man sits on a throne made of sapphire. The Bible later makes mention of a type of angel found in the Merkabah called Seraphim angels. These angels appear like flashes of fire continuously ascending and descending and these Seraphim angels power the movement of the chariot. In the hierarchy of angels, Seraphim are the highest, that is, closest to God, followed by the Hayyot. The chariot is in a constant state of motion, and the energy behind this movement runs according to this hierarchy, the movement of the Ophanim is controlled by the Living creatures, or Hayyot, while the movement of the Hayyot is controlled by the Seraphim. The movement of all the angels of the chariot is controlled by the Likeness of a Man on the Throne
14.
1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg
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The 1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg was a mass sighting of celestial phenomena or unidentified flying objects above Nuremberg, Germany. The phenomenon has been interpreted by some modern UFO enthusiasts as an aerial battle and this view is mostly dismissed by skeptics, some referencing Carl Jungs mid-twentieth century writings about the subject while others find the phenomena is likely to be a Sun Dog. According to witnesses, there were hundreds of spheres, cylinders, a broadsheet news article was printed later that month, describing the event. The broadsheet, illustrated with an engraving and text by Hans Glaser. The document is archived in the prints and drawings collection at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich in Zurich, at first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. After all this there was something like a spear, very long and thick, sighted, the shaft pointed to the east. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows, or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen, by Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg. More recently, the event has been classified as a UFO sighting by many, jung expressed a view that the spectacle was likely a natural phenomenon with religious and military interpretations overlaying it. “If the Ufos were living organisms, one would think of a swarm of insects rising with the sun, not to one another. A religious view would emphasize the crosses, jung thinks the images of four globes coupled by lines suggested crossed marriage quaternities and forms the model for “the primitive cross cousin marriage. ”It could also be an individuation symbol. The association of sunrise suggests “the revelation of the light. ”Otto Billig made an effort to provide a context for the apparition in his comments. He notes Nuremberg was one of the most prestigious cities of the late Middle Ages, though ultimately successful in defending itself, the rebuilding of fortifications in Nuremberg necessitated a new round of taxation and the city suffered hard times in its aftermath. Another sky apparition followed in July of knights fighting each other with fiery swords, very similar apparitions of knights fighting in the skies were frequently reported during the Thirty Years War. Such conditions typically accentuate apocalyptic thought
15.
Aurora, Texas, UFO incident
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The Aurora, Texas, UFO incident reportedly occurred on April 17,1897 when, according to locals, a UFO crashed on a farm near Aurora, Texas. The incident is claimed to have resulted in a fatality from the crash, during the 1896–1897 timeframe, numerous sightings of a cigar-shaped mystery airship were reported across the United States. One of these appeared in the April 19,1897. Haydon, the alleged UFO is said to have hit a windmill on the property of a Judge J. S, Proctor two days earlier at around 6am local time, resulting in its crash. The pilot did not survive the crash, and was buried with Christian rites at the nearby Aurora Cemetery, reportedly, wreckage from the crash site was dumped into a nearby well located under the damaged windmill, while some ended up with the alien in the grave. Adding to the mystery was the story of Mr. Brawley Oates, as a result, Oates sealed up the well with a concrete slab and placed an outbuilding atop the slab. The hoax theory is based on historical research performed by Barbara Brammer. Her research revealed that, in the prior to the alleged crash, Aurora had been beset by a series of tragic incidents, First. Second, a fire on the towns west side claimed several buildings, shortly after the fire, a spotted fever epidemic hit the town, nearly wiping out the remaining citizens and placing the town under quarantine. Finally, a planned railroad got within 27 miles of Aurora, further, in 1979, Time magazine interviewed Etta Pegues who claimed that Haydon had fabricated the entire story, stating that Haydon wrote it as a joke and to bring interest to Aurora. The railroad bypassed us, and the town was dying, the famous Jim Marrs interviewed an eye witness who allegedly saw the UFO crash, also, the Judge’s windmill technically was not a windmill but a three-story wooden water pump tower. The incident has been investigated on numerous occasions, one was broadcast by local television station KDFW FOX4 and two were aired on cable television. In 1998, Dallas-based TV station KDFW aired a report about the Aurora incident. Reporter Richard Ray interviewed former Fort Worth Star Telegram reporter Jim Marrs and other locals, however, Rays report was unable to find conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life or technology. Ray reported that the State of Texas erected a plaque in town that outlines the tale. On December 2,2005, UFO Files first aired an episode related to this incident, the episode featured a 1973 investigation led by Bill Case, an aviation writer for the Dallas Times Herald and the Texas state director of Mutual UFO Network. MUFON uncovered two new eyewitnesses to the crash, mary Evans, who was 15 at the time, told of how her parents went to the crash site and the discovery of the alien body. Charlie Stephens, who was age 10, told how he saw the airship trailing smoke as it headed north toward Aurora
16.
Battle of Los Angeles
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Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up. Some contemporary ufologists and conspiracy theorists have suggested the targets were extraterrestrial spacecraft, Air raid sirens sounded throughout Los Angeles County on the night of 24–25 February 1942. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3,16 am the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing.50 caliber machine guns and 12. 8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft, pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4,14 am, the all clear was sounded and the blackout order lifted at 7,21 am. The incident was front-page news along the U. S, pacific coast, and earned some mass media coverage throughout the nation. Within hours of the end of the air raid, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a conference, saying the entire incident was a false alarm due to anxiety. Knoxs comments were followed by statements from the Army the next day that reflected General George C, marshalls belief that the incident might have been caused by commercial airplanes used as a psychological warfare campaign to generate panic. Some contemporary press outlets suspected a cover-up, an editorial in the Long Beach Independent wrote, There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it appears that some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion on the matter. Speculation was rampant as to invading airplanes and their bases, theories included a secret base in northern Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes. Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland. Representative Leland Ford of Santa Monica called for a Congressional investigation, the Japanese government, after the war ended, declared that they had flown no airplanes over Los Angeles during the war. Los Angeles Times writer Larry Harnisch noted that the photo along with faked newspaper headlines were presented as true historical material in trailers for the film Battle. Harnisch commented, if the publicity campaign wanted to establish UFO research as nothing but lies and fakery, every February, the Fort MacArthur Museum, located at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, hosts an entertainment event called The Great LA Air Raid of 1942. The Bombardment of Ellwood, the events happened the previous day. Attacks on North America during World War II1941, a 1979 film by Steven Spielberg, the Battle of Los Angeles at Saturday Night Uforia San Francisco virtual museum article The Army Air Forces in World War II
17.
Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting
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Arnolds description of the objects also led to the press quickly coining the terms flying saucer and flying disc as popular descriptive terms for UFOs. On June 24,1947, Arnold was flying from Chehalis, Washington to Yakima and he made a brief detour after learning of a $5,000 reward for the discovery of a U. S. Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane that had crashed near Mt. Rainier. The skies were clear and there was a mild wind. A few minutes before 3,00 p. m. at about 9,200 feet in altitude and near Mineral, Washington, he gave up his search and he saw a bright flashing light, similar to sunlight reflecting from a mirror. Afraid he might be close to another aircraft, Arnold scanned the skies around him. About 30 seconds after seeing the first flash of light, Arnold saw a series of flashes in the distance off to his left, or north of Mt. Rainier. He thought they might be reflections on his airplanes windows, but a few quick tests ruled this out, the reflections came from flying objects. He then thought they might be a new type of jet, sometimes he said he could see them on edge, when they seemed so thin and flat they were practically invisible. According to Jerome Clark, Arnold described them as a series of objects with convex shapes, at one point Arnold said they flew behind a subpeak of Rainier and briefly disappeared. Knowing his position and the position of the subpeak, Arnold placed their distance as they flew past Rainier at about 23 miles, Army Air Force analysts would later estimate 140 to 280 feet, based on analysis of human visual acuity and other sighting details. Arnold said the objects were grouped together, as Ted Bloecher writes, in a diagonally stepped-down, echelon formation, stretched out over a distance that he later calculated to be five miles. Though moving on a more or less level horizontal plane, Arnold said the objects weaved from side to side, darting through the valleys and they would occasionally flip or bank on their edges in unison as they turned or maneuvered causing almost blindingly bright or mirror-like flashes of light. The encounter gave him a feeling, but Arnold suspected he had seen test flights of a new U. S. military aircraft. As the objects passed Mt Rainer, Arnold turned his plane southward on a more or less parallel course and it was at this point that he opened his side window and began observing the objects unobstructed by any glass that might have produced reflections. The objects did not disappear and continued to move rapidly southward. When he later had time to do the calculation, the speed was over 1,700 miles per hour and this was about three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. It was this speed in addition to the unusual saucer or disk description that seemed to capture peoples attention. Arnold landed in Yakima at about 4.00 p. m. and quickly told friend and airport general manager Al Baxter the amazing story, and before long and he discussed the story with the staff, and later wrote that Baxter didnt believe him
18.
Roswell UFO incident
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In mid-1947, a United States Air Force balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Following wide initial interest in the flying disc, the US military stated that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the nature of the crashed object, a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul. Nevertheless, the Roswell incident continues to be of interest in popular media, Roswell has been described as the worlds most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim. The sequence of events was triggered by the crash of a Project Mogul balloon near Roswell, the military decided to conceal the true purpose of the crashed device – nuclear test monitoring – and instead inform the public that the crash was of a weather balloon. Later that day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force Roger Ramey had stated that a balloon was recovered by the RAAF personnel. A press conference was held, featuring debris said to be from the crashed object, historian Robert Goldberg wrote that the intended effect was achieved, the story died the next day. Subsequently, the incident faded from the attention of UFO enthusiasts for more than 30 years, on June 14,1947, William Brazel, a foreman working on the Foster homestead, noticed clusters of debris approximately 30 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw an area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil. He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife, some accounts have described Brazel as having gathered some of the material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under some brush. The next day, Brazel heard reports about flying discs and wondered if that was what he had picked up, on July 7, Brazel saw Sheriff Wilcox and whispered kinda confidential like that he may have found a flying disc. Another account quotes Wilcox as saying Brazel reported the object on July 6, Wilcox called RAAF Major Jesse Marcel and a man in plainclothes accompanied Brazel back to the ranch where more pieces were picked up. Spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon looking for any parts of the weather device. We found a few patches of tinfoil and rubber. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter, in all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There were no words to be anywhere on the instrument. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate some sort of attachment may have been used
19.
Aztec, New Mexico, UFO incident
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The Aztec, New Mexico, UFO incident was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid 1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some Ufologists resurrected the story in claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some Ufologists to substantiate the story was dismissed by the bureau as a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated. The craft was said to be 99 feet in diameter, the largest UFO to date, Scully named as his sources two men identified as Newton and Gebauer, who reportedly told him the incident had been covered up and the military had taken the craft for secret research. Scully wrote that the crashed UFO along with other flying saucers captured by the government came from Venus, according to Scully, the inhabitants stocked concentrated food wafers and heavy water for drinking purposes, and every dimension of the craft was divisible by nine. Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Scullys story as full of wild imaginings, during the late 1940s and early 50s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer traveled through Aztec, attempting to sell devices known in the oil business as doodlebugs. They claimed that these devices could find oil, gas and gold, and that they could do so because they were based on alien technology recovered from the supposed crash of a flying saucer. When J. P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle asked the con-men for a piece of metal from the alien devices. In 1949, author Frank Scully published a series of columns in Variety magazine retelling the story told to him by Newton. He later expanded these columns to create Behind the Flying Saucers, four years later the hoax was exposed in True magazine. After the article was published, many victims of the pair came forward, one of the victims was the millionaire Herman Glader, who pressed charges. The two were convicted of fraud in 1953, through the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, most Ufologists considered the subject thoroughly discredited and therefore avoided it. However, in the late 70s, author Leonard Stringfield purported that not only was the incident real, the supposed humanoid bodies were said to measure between 36 inches and 42 inches in height, and weigh around 40 pounds. Ufologists claim that shortly after the craft was downed, the cleared the area of evidence. In April 2011, UFO enthusiasts discovered what has come to be known as the Hottel memo, though the memo had never been classified, and had been making the rounds online for some years, it was seen as proof of an official cover-up by the US government. The memo contained the testimony of a man named Guy Hottel and it was addressed to J. Edgar Hoover and indexed in the FBI records, but this was standard practice at the time
20.
McMinnville UFO photographs
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The McMinnville UFO photographs were taken on a farm near McMinnville, Oregon, United States, in 1950. The photos were reprinted in Life magazine and in newspapers across the nation, most UFO skeptics have concluded that the photos are a hoax, but many ufologists continue to argue that the photos are genuine, and show an unidentified object in the sky. Paul and Evelyn Trent lived on a farm nine miles from McMinnville. According to her reports, on May 11,1950 at 7,30 p. m. Evelyn Trent was walking back to her farmhouse after feeding rabbits on her farm. Before reaching the house she claimed to see a slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object heading in her direction from the northeast and she yelled for her husband, who was inside the house, upon leaving the house he claimed he also saw the object. After a short time he went back inside their home to obtain a camera, Paul Trents father claimed he briefly viewed the object before it flew away. It took some time for Paul Trent to have the film developed, when he mentioned the incident to his banker, Frank Wortmann, the banker was intrigued enough to display the photos from his bank window in McMinnville. Shortly afterwards Bill Powell, a reporter, convinced Mr. Trent to loan him the negatives. Powell examined the negatives and found no evidence that they were tampered with or faked, on June 8,1950, Powells story of the incident—accompanied by the two photos—was published as a front-page story in the local McMinnville newspaper, the Telephone-Register. Life magazine published cropped versions of the photos on June 26,1950, along with a photo of Trent, the Trents had been promised that the negatives would be returned to them, however, they were not returned—Life magazine told the Trents that it had misplaced the negatives. In 1967 the negatives were found in the files of the United Press International, the Trents were not immediately informed that their lost negatives had been found. After Hartmann concluded his investigation he returned the negatives to UPI, in 1970 the Trents asked Philip Bladine, the editor of the News-Register, for the negatives, the Trents noted that they had never been paid for the negatives and thus wanted them back. Bladine asked UPI to return the negatives, which it did, however, for some reason Bladine never told the Trents that the negatives had been returned. In 1975 the negatives were found in the files of the News-Register by Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist for the U. S. Navy, after completing his own study of the photos, Maccabee ensured that the photos were returned to the Trents. In the 1980s Philip J. Klass and Robert Sheaffer, journalists and notable skeptics, concluded that the photos were faked, and that the entire event was a hoax. Their primary argument was that shadows on a garage in the side of the photos proved that the photos were taken in the morning rather than in the early evening. Klass and Sheaffer argued that since the Trents had apparently lied about the time the photos were taken and they also believed the object may have been the detached rear-view mirror of a vehicle. When Sheaffer sent his research and conclusions to William Hartmann, Hartmann withdrew the positive assessment of the case he had sent to the Condon Committee
21.
1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident
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The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident the climax of the 1952 flap - Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of reports. At 11,40 p. m. on Saturday, July 19,1952, Edward Nugent, the objects were located 15 miles south-southwest of the city, no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths. Nugents superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport and he later wrote, We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed. Their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft, Barnes had two controllers check Nugents radar, they found that it was working normally. Took off, zooming away at incredible speed, cocklin told Zacko Did you see that. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, airman William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail. Unlike anything I had ever seen before, as Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object took off at an unbelievable speed. On one of National Airports runways, S. C, pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his DC-4 for permission to take off. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control towers radar had picked up unknown objects closing in on his position, pierman observed six objects — white, tailless, fast-moving lights — over a 14-minute period. Pierman was in contact with Barnes during his sighting. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south, the light would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude. At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews Air Force Base were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon, the object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, the objects were last detected by radar at 5,30 a. m. The sightings of July 19–20,1952, made headlines in newspapers around the nation. A typical example was the headline from the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa and it read SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL in large black type. By coincidence, USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Forces Project Blue Book investigation into UFO sightings, was in Washington at the time. However, he did not learn about the sightings until Monday, July 21, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper
22.
Flatwoods monster
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Stories of the creature are an example of a purported close encounter of the third kind. Various descriptions of the entity exist, most describe it as being at least 7 feet tall, with a black body and a dark, glowing face. Witnesses described the head as elongated, shaped like a sideways diamond, and as having non-human eyes. The creatures body was described as inhumanly-shaped and clad in a dark pleated exoskeleton, the creature is referred to as the Lizard Monster on the March 10,2010, episode of MonsterQuest. Some witnesses reported seeing a large, pulsating red ball of light that hovered above or rested on the ground, ufologists believe that it may have been a powered craft that the entity had piloted. Upon witnessing the object, the boys went to the home of the May brothers mother, Kathleen May, from there, Mrs. Lemons dog ran ahead out of sight and suddenly began barking, and moments later ran back to the group with its tail between its legs. After traveling about 0.25 miles the group reached the top of a hill and they also detected a pungent mist that made their eyes and noses burn. Other sources describe it as emitting a shrill hissing noise before gliding towards them, changing direction, at this point the group fled in panic. Upon returning home, Mrs. May contacted local Sheriff Robert Carr and Mr. A. Lee Stewert, co-owner of the Braxton Democrat, a local newspaper. Stewert conducted a number of interviews and returned to the site with Lemon later that night, Sheriff Carr and his deputy Burnell Long searched the area separately, but reported finding no trace of the encounter other than the smell. Early the next morning, Stewert visited the site of the encounter for a second time and he immediately reported them as being possible signs of a saucer landing, based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to vehicle traffic for at least a year. These accounts included the story of a mother and her 21-year-old-daughter, the encounter reportedly affected the daughter so badly that she was confined to Clarksburg Hospital for three weeks. m. on September 13. The symptoms included irritation of the nose and swelling of the throat, Lemon suffered from vomiting and convulsions throughout the night, and had difficulties with his throat for several weeks afterward. Nickell claimed that the two of which were distorted by the heightened state of anxiety felt by the witnesses after having observed the former. Nickells conclusions are shared by a number of investigators, including those of the Air Force. Skeptics have also proposed misidentified owl sightings as explanations for the Mothman, every year there is a festival in Flatwoods to celebrate the Green Monster. The three-day festival consists of a weekend of music, the Green Monster museum. The last year the took place was in 2006
23.
Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident
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The incident has since gained some prominence in the literature of ufology and the popular media. It has, however, also argued that the incidents can be explained by false radar returns. The incident began at the USAF-tenanted RAF Bentwaters, Suffolk, on the evening of 13 August 1956 and this was a dry, largely clear night with, observers noted, an unusually large number of shooting stars, associated with the Perseid meteor shower. At 21,30, Radar operators at the base tracked a target, appearing similar to a normal aircraft return, approaching the base from the sea at an apparent speed of several thousand miles per hour. A T-33 trainer from the 512th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, crewed by 1st Lieutenants Charles Metz and Andrew Rowe, was directed to investigate the radar contacts, at 22,55, a target was detected approaching Bentwaters from the east at a speed estimated around 2000–4000 mph. It faded from the scope as it passed over the base, at this point, Bentwaters alerted the US-tenanted RAF Lakenheath base,40 miles to the north-west, to look out for the targets. Ground personnel at Lakenheath made visual sightings of several luminous objects, Perkins claimed that two RAF De Havilland Venom interceptors were scrambled and directed towards a radar target near Lakenheath. The second Venom was forced to return to its home station due to engine problems, the Condon Committee included the case in its analysis largely in response to Perkins letter. Based on the available, the Committees researcher felt that while anomalous propagation was possible. Focusing on the phase of the incident at Lakenheath, he came to the remarkable conclusion that this is the most puzzling. The apparently rational, intelligent behavior of the UFO suggests a mechanical device of unknown origin as the most probable explanation of this sighting. No more information emerged on the case until the late 1970s, when an article in the Daily Express, flight Lieutenant Freddie Wimbledon wrote to the Sunday Times on 19 March 1978 contesting Ridpaths statement that the incident had effectively been explained by Klass. Wimbledon had been the radar controller on duty at RAF Neatishead at the time of the sightings, Wimbledon disagreed with Klass analysis, remembering the incident as involving a solid radar return tracked from three sets on the ground and one in the intercepting aircraft. They also asserted no visual contacts were made, at the time 23 Squadron decided that the radar contact had, if anything, been with a weather balloon. To add to the nature of the accounts collected, another Venom crew was traced who had been scrambled much earlier in the evening. Scofields account of the radio transmissions agreed, puzzlingly, with those of Wimbledon and Perkins, though he felt able to identify the crews as Chambers / Brady. The time and path of Scofields flight was identified as one which could also explain the sighting of a Venom at Ely by the civilian, Killock. The new research additionally revealed that 23 Squadrons CO, Wing Commander A. N. Davis, had also diverted to investigate the radar returns while flying a Venom from RAF Coltishall
24.
The Trindade Island's UFO
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Refers to a unidentified flying object which was seen and photographed over the Trindade Island on January 16,1958. The photographs were rumored as being a hoax, in August 2010, a major T. V. show in Brazil aired information stating that the original photographer had made hoax photographs in the past. Reportedly Captain Viegas was on the deck with several scientists and members of the crew when he noticed a flying object. Witnesses present reportedly saw the U. F. O. at the same time and it reportedly came toward the island from the east, flew towards the Pico Desejado, made a steep turn and went away very quickly to the north-west. As soon as the object was noticed, Almiro Baraúna was sought for photography, after getting the camera and going up the quarter-deck, he managed to take several pictures of the object. After being disclosed, the pictures were exhaustively analyzed by the Laboratório de Reconhecimento Aéreo da Marinha, all the pictures were considered genuine, taken from a real occurrence, with the certification of military personnel. The pictures even received confirmation from Juscelino Kubitschek, president of Brazil at that time, to this day because of the certification of the witnesses and the official recognition, the object in Almiro Baraúnas pictures remains unexplained. In 2010, a document containing a testimonial by Baraúna was unveiled, project Blue Book concluded that the photographs were hoaxed. The credibility of Barauna himself has been questioned and he had produced hoaxed photographs in the past and in the past had written an article showing how a well-known U. F. O. Photograph taken some years earlier could have been hoaxed, also, Barauna had the negatives for two days before the Brazilian Navy took them from him for their investigation, and he had cut them away from the remainder of the film negatives. Also, the Brazilian Navy did not get statements from the immediately after the event. Therefore, the number of witnesses is not known with certainty. Powells Trindade Island UFO page Study by Martin Shough Study by Alexandre Borges
25.
Barney and Betty Hill
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Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who were allegedly abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20,1961. The incident came to be called the Hill Abduction or the Zeta Reticuli Incident because the couple stated they had been kidnapped for a time by a UFO. It was the first widely publicized report of alien abduction, adapted into the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey, most of Betty Hills notes, tapes, and other items have been placed in the permanent collection at the University of New Hampshire, her alma mater. In July 2011, the state Division of Historical Resources marked the site of the alleged crafts first approach with a historical marker, the Hills lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Barney was employed by the United States Postal Service, while Betty was a social worker. Active in the local Unitarian congregation, the Hills were also members of the NAACP and community leaders and they were an interracial couple at a time when it was particularly uncommon in the United States, Barney was African American and Betty was white. According to a variety of reports given by the Hills, the alleged UFO sighting happened on September 19,1961, the Hills were driving back to Portsmouth from a vacation in Niagara Falls and Montreal. There were only a few cars on the road. Just south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Betty claimed to have observed a bright point of light in the sky that moved from below the moon and the planet Jupiter, upward to the west of the moon. While Barney navigated U. S. Route 3, Betty reasoned that she was observing a falling star, since it moved erratically and grew bigger and brighter, Betty urged Barney to stop the car for a closer look, as well as to walk their dog, Delsey. Barney stopped at a picnic area just south of Twin Mountain. Worried about the presence of bears, Barney retrieved a pistol that he kept in the trunk of the car, Betty, through binoculars, observed an odd-shaped craft flashing multi-colored lights travel across the face of the moon. Because her sister had confided to her about having a flying saucer sighting several years earlier, through binoculars Barney observed what he reasoned was a commercial airliner traveling toward Vermont on its way to Montreal. However, he changed his mind, because without looking as if it had turned. This observation caused Barney to realize, this object that was a plane was not a plane and he quickly returned to the car and drove toward Franconia Notch, a narrow, mountainous stretch of the road. The Hills claimed that they continued driving on the isolated road, at one point, the object passed above a restaurant and signal tower on top of Cannon Mountain. It passed over the mountain and came out near the Old Man of the Mountain, Betty testified that it was at least one and a half times the length of the granite cliff profile, which was 40 feet long, and that it seemed to be rotating. The couple watched as the silent, illuminated craft moved erratically and bounced back, approximately one mile south of Indian Head, they said, the object rapidly descended toward their vehicle, causing Barney to stop directly in the middle of the highway
26.
Solway Firth Spaceman
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The Solway Firth Spaceman is a figure seen in a photograph taken in 1964 by fireman, photographer and local historian Jim Templeton. The picture was taken on Burgh Marsh, situated near Burgh by Sands, overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria, Templeton claimed the photograph shows a background figure wearing a space suit and insisted that he did not see anyone present when the photograph was taken. The image was reproduced widely in newspapers and gained the interest of ufologists. A contemporary analysis concluded that the figure was the wife, standing with her back towards the camera. On 23 May 1964, Jim Templeton, a firefighter from Carlisle, Cumberland, Templeton said the only other people on the marshes that day were a couple of old women sitting in a car at the far end of the marsh. Templeton insists that he did not see the figure until after his photographs were developed, according to UFO author David Clarke in 2014, the spaceman is most likely Templetons wife, Annie, who was present at the time and was seen on other photographs taken that day. Annie Templeton was wearing a blue dress on the day in question. It has been argued that, when using software to darken the image and straighten the horizon. Of its impact, Clarke said, People will still be talking about it in another 50 years, Templeton stated, I took the picture to the police in Carlisle who, after many doubts, examined it and stated there was nothing suspicious about it. The local newspaper, the Cumberland News, picked up the story, the picture is certainly not a fake, and I am as bemused as anyone else as to how this figure appeared in the background. In September 1964, Templeton dismissed the two men as frauds, saying, It all looks like a leg pull to me, im sure the men were not security agents. He alleged that technicians later saw his photograph in an Australian newspaper, responding to a request from ufologists to know if the photo was of interest to the authorities, a British Ministry of Defence official said that the Templeton photo was of no interest to them. Suspected UFO sighting leads to Cumbria hotspot claim
27.
Kecksburg UFO incident
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The Kecksburg UFO incident occurred on December 9,1965, at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, United States. A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six U. S. states and Ontario, Canada. It was generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor after authorities discounted other proposed explanations such as a crash, errant missile test. However, eyewitnesses in the village of Kecksburg, about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. A boy said he saw the land, his mother saw a wisp of blue smoke arising from the woods. Another reported feeling a vibration and a thump about the time the object reportedly landed, others from Kecksburg, including local volunteer fire department members, reported finding an object in the shape of an acorn and about as large as a Volkswagen Beetle. Writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs was also said to be in a band around the base of the object, witnesses further reported that intense military presence, most notably the United States Army, secured the area, ordered civilians out, and then removed an object on a flatbed truck. The military claimed they searched the woods and found absolutely nothing, the Tribune-Review from nearby Greensburg which had a reporter at the scene ran an article the next morning, Unidentified Flying Object Falls near Kecksburg—Army Ropes off Area. State Police officials there ordered the area roped off to await the arrival of both U. S. Army engineers and possibly, civilian scientists. However, an edition of the newspaper stated that nothing had been found after authorities searched the area. The official explanation of the widely seen fireball was that it was a mid-sized meteor, similarities have been drawn between the Kecksburg incident and the Roswell UFO incident, leading to the former being referred to as Pennsylvanias Roswell. Several articles were written about the fireball in science journals, the February 1966 issue of Sky & Telescope reported that the fireball was seen over the Detroit-Windsor area at about 4,44 p. m. EST. The Federal Aviation Administration had received 23 reports from aircraft pilots, a seismograph 25 miles southwest of Detroit had recorded the shock waves created by the fireball as it passed through the atmosphere. The Sky & Telescope article concluded that the path of the fireball extended roughly from northwest to southeast and ended in or near the western part of Lake Erie. A1967 article by two astronomers in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada used the record to pinpoint the time of passage over the Detroit area to 4,43 p. m. In addition, they used photographs of the trail north of Detroit at two different locations to triangulate the trajectory of the object. They concluded that the fireball was descending at an angle, moving from the southwest to the northeast. The JRASC trajectory was at right angles to that proposed by Sky & Telescope, or a trajectory that would have taken the fireball in the direction of western Pennsylvania
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Westall UFO
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The Westall UFO encounter is an event that occurred on 6 April 1966 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The paddock was adjacent to a grove of trees in an area known as The Grange. According to reports, the object then ascended in a north-westerly direction over the suburb of Clayton South, witness descriptions were mixed, Andrew Greenwood, a science teacher, told The Dandenong Journal at the time that he saw a silvery-green disc. After a short period the object - with witnesses now numbering over 200 - then climbed at speed and departed towards the north-west, as the object gained altitude some accounts describe it as having been pursued from the scene by five unidentified aircraft which circled the object. The Dandenong Journal covered the encounter in detail and ran two front page stories, the first was on 14 April. And the next was on 21 April, hundreds of children and a number of teachers at Westall School, Clayton, watched the object during morning break. The newspaper also said a number of small aeroplanes circled around it, however, a check later showed that no commercial, private or RAAF pilots had reported anything unusual in the area. The Weather Bureau released a balloon at Laverton at 8,30 am, witnesses and researchers were surprised when The Sun News-Pictorial ran no story, yet The Age did. The Sun and The Herald newspapers, while not mentioning the Westall incident, the alleged sighting was investigated by two groups, The Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society and Phenomena Research Australia. Both groups described it as being one of Australias major unexplained UFO cases, the VFSRS team arrived on the site on 8 April and spoke to students and viewed the ground mark. The VFSRS printed an image and a report in their magazine Australian UFO Bulletin in December 2000. An investigator, Brian Boyle, arrived at the site on 9 April with four army investigators, Boyle did a number of interviews, which he recorded on tape, over a number of days and took samples from the ground mark. These investigators were able to speak to many of the witnesses as it was over the Easter holidays, although some witnesses reported five Cessna-type aircraft around the object, investigators were unable to find any record of such aircraft. Moorabbin Airport, which is 4.76 km from the location, was checked, the RAAF also reported no military activity in that area. The Australian Skeptics described the object as potentially having been a military aircraft. They suggest that it may have been a target drogue, like a wind sock, towed by one plane for the others to chase. A witness reunion was held at Westall Tennis Club Hall, on 8 April 2006, a 50-minute HDTV documentary called “Westall ‘66, A Suburban UFO Mystery” first aired on Australian TV on 4 June 2010. On 4 June 2010 a Seven Network TV program, Today Tonight, produced a segment about the Westall case and it was also covered in Close Encounters
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