Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
MediaApr 2007
Videos posted to YouTube in April 2007 claimed to show a secret 'Apollo 20' mission finding an alien craft and a body on the Moon. No Apollo 20 ever flew (the mission was canceled), and French artist Thierry Speth later said he made the videos as fiction.
GovernmentMar 2007
France's space agency CNES opened its UFO study unit's case files to the public online, starting with about 400 of roughly 1,600 cases and promising the rest later. Press reports called France the first country to publish its official UFO archive this way.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
WhistleblowersMar 2007
Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who mocked the 1997 Phoenix Lights at a staged news conference, said he had seen a large craft that night and believed it was not of this world. An astronomer quoted by AP traced sightings that night to flares dropped by A-10 aircraft.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Skinwalker Ranch2007
Former Senate leader Harry Reid later said he asked Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, who ran the defense appropriations subcommittee, to fund a study of aerial phenomena. He said they agreed to unpublicized money in the defense bill, and that the Pentagon put the study out to bid, which Bigelow won.
Photo: Office of United States Senator Ted Stevens (R- Alaska), Public domain
Whistleblowers2007
Jesse Marcel Jr., son of Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr., published The Roswell Legacy, describing how as a 10-year-old he was shown debris his father brought home in 1947. The military has said the debris came from a balloon; his account rests on childhood memory.
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Public domain
Close encounters2007
Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill's niece, published 'Captured!' with New Page Books. It retells the 1961 Hill abduction claim, drawing on the Hills' papers, letters and audiotapes, which Marden held as conservator, and compares their hypnosis sessions.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government2007
Yves Sillard, a former director-general of France's space agency CNES, published a 2007 book on unidentified aerospace phenomena. He told a regional daily the extraterrestrial idea should be weighed seriously and objectively but remained only a hypothesis.
Sightings2007
Ostfold University College and Italy's Institute of Radio Astronomy reported optical spectra of a Hessdalen light showing silicon, iron, scandium and titanium lines, suggesting ionized gas rather than a solid object. The researchers called the result preliminary.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encountersJan 2007
Chris Bledsoe of Hope Mills, North Carolina, says that on a fishing trip on the Cape Fear River he saw glowing orbs and lost several hours. He later self-published a book about this and later experiences; his account has not been independently verified.
Sightings7 Nov 2006
United Airlines employees reported a dark, disc-shaped object hovering over gate C17 at O'Hare before shooting up through the clouds. The FAA said radar showed nothing unusual and suggested a weather phenomenon. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in January 2007.
Photo: Payton Chung from Chicago, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentMay 2006
After a Freedom of Information request, Britain's Ministry of Defence released Project Condign, a Defence Intelligence Staff study of UFO reports completed in December 2000. It said sightings could be explained by natural causes such as meteors and unusual atmospheric conditions.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings11 Apr 2006
The Planetary Society and Harvard dedicated a 72-inch telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, built only to look for brief laser-like flashes that could come from other civilizations. Physicist Paul Horowitz led the project, which surveyed the northern Milky Way.
Photo: Daderot, Public domain
MediaApr 2006
Ahead of a 2006 comedy film about them, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield said the 1995 'alien autopsy' footage was a re-creation they staged, which they called a restoration of film they claimed to have seen. Sculptor John Humphreys said he made the alien body.
Whistleblowers2006
Disclosure Project founder Steven Greer published 'Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge', a memoir of his claimed contact experiences and his campaign for disclosure, including his accounts of meetings with a CIA director and senators. Those accounts are his own and not independently confirmed.
Media4 Nov 2005
Walt Disney Pictures released the computer-animated 'Chicken Little', directed by Mark Dindal. The young bird mocked for claiming the sky was falling ends up facing a real alien invasion of his town.
MediaNov 2005
Iker Jimenez and Carmen Porter launched Cuarto Milenio on the new Spanish channel Cuatro. The long-running weekly program covers mystery, the occult, conspiracy and unexplained phenomena, with UFO cases among its regular subjects.
Photo: Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, CC BY-SA 2.0
Close encounters15 Oct 2005
A monument was unveiled in the village of Emilcin to mark farmer Jan Wolski's claim that he met two small beings and was examined aboard a craft on May 10, 1978. The Warsaw-based Nautilus Foundation, which studies unexplained phenomena, erected it.
Photo: 24april1975, CC BY 4.0
Media21 Sep 2005
ABC premiered Invasion, Shaun Cassidy's drama in which a savage storm batters Homestead, Florida, and a family begins to suspect an alien takeover. Filmed before Hurricane Katrina, it debuted weeks after that storm.
Photo: Tony Barnard, Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0
Media16 Sep 2005
CBS launched Threshold, a Friday-night drama starring Carla Gugino as a contingency planner leading a secret government team after a hostile alien first contact. The title was the plan's code name. Variety praised it but doubted it would draw beyond a cult audience.
Photo: Sidewalks Entertainment, CC BY 3.0
GovernmentSep 2005
Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian defence minister, became a public UFO advocate when he spoke at a Toronto symposium in September 2005. He later urged governments to disclose alleged alien technology; an astronomer quoted in the press said there was little evidence of visits.
Photo: Government of Canada, Public domain
