Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media9 Aug 2005
Philip J. Klass, the Aviation Week editor who spent decades arguing that UFO reports had ordinary explanations, died at 85 in Florida. He wrote several skeptical books on the subject.
Photo: Robert Sheaffer, CC BY-SA 3.0
GovernmentAug 2005
Library and Archives Canada launched 'Canada's UFOs: The Search for the Unknown', an online collection of digitized UFO files from the Departments of Transport and National Defence, the RCMP and the National Research Council, covering reports from 1947 to the early 1980s.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons user (own work), CC BY-SA 3.0
Media29 Jun 2005
Paramount released Steven Spielberg's remake of H.G. Wells' alien-invasion story in U.S. theaters on 29 June 2005. It grossed about $234 million in North America and about $604 million worldwide.
Photo: Mr Bullitt, CC BY 3.0
Media16 Apr 2005
BBC One aired 'Aliens of London' in the first series of the revived Doctor Who. A spaceship crash-lands in the Thames, London is sealed off and the world goes on alert, in a two-part story featuring the alien Slitheen.
Sightings28 Mar 2005
ISS commander Leroy Chiao said that during a spacewalk he saw a line of five lights and could not identify them. Amateur analyst James C. Smith later concluded they were most likely lights of a squid-fishing fleet off South America.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media24 Feb 2005
ABC broadcast a two-hour prime-time special in which anchor Peter Jennings examined UFO reports from 1947 onward, interviewing pilots, police and military witnesses as well as skeptics. A syndicated preview called it measured and noted it offered no proof of a visiting spacecraft.
Photo: Sgt. John Queen, Public domain
Media6 Feb 2005
Fox previewed Seth MacFarlane's animated sitcom American Dad!, whose CIA-agent father shares his home with Roger, a space alien rescued from Area 51. The show began its regular Sunday run that May.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government2005
Following an audit, CNES restructured its UFO service as GEIPAN, adding public information to its mission and placing it under a steering committee with gendarmerie, police, air force and weather service members. The committee first met in September 2005; GEIPAN later put its case archives online.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Media2005
In a 2005 Science Channel documentary, Aldrin described a light that seemed to travel alongside Apollo 11. He later told the AP the interview was edited to omit his explanation: most likely sunlight off a panel shed by the spacecraft. The 1969 crew debrief records the sighting.
Photo: Neil A. Armstrong, Public domain
Close encounters2005
Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy published Abducted with Harvard University Press, based on her interviews with people who believed aliens had taken them. She argued that sleep paralysis, cultural ideas and memories shaped under hypnosis can explain how such beliefs form.
Skinwalker Ranch2005
Former NIDS deputy administrator Colm Kelleher and Las Vegas reporter George Knapp published Hunt for the Skinwalker, describing incidents the authors say NIDS researchers recorded at the Utah ranch, including UFO sightings, unknown animals and cattle mutilations.
Photo: Paul from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media2005
Paradise Valley physician Lynne Kitei, author of a book on the 1997 Phoenix Lights, premiered her documentary on the sightings at a Phoenix-area cinema in 2005. She has said she witnessed the lights herself.
Media2005
Werner Herzog's 'science-fiction fantasy' The Wild Blue Yonder features Brad Dourif as an alien from Andromeda who narrates over NASA shuttle footage, and whose story ties to the craft said to have landed at Roswell. It won the FIPRESCI critics' prize at the Venice festival.
Photo: Nicolas Genin, CC BY-SA 3.0
MilitaryNov 2004
Navy F/A-18F crews from the USS Nimitz strike group, cued by the cruiser USS Princeton's radar, reported intercepting a smooth white object they could not identify. Another crew recorded the infrared video the Pentagon later released as FLIR1.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Close encounters27 Sep 2004
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer best known for studying people who reported alien encounters, was struck and killed by a vehicle in London at age 74 while walking home from a T.E. Lawrence symposium.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media24 Sep 2004
Revolution Studios released 'The Forgotten', directed by Joseph Ruben, with Julianne Moore as a mother told her son never existed. She discovers aliens took him and fights to recover him against opposition from both government and alien forces.
Photo: Nicolas Genin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings21 Aug 2004
Residents of suburban Tinley Park, Illinois, reported three silent red lights hovering in a triangle for up to half an hour, with similar reports on later nights including Halloween 2004. A resident filmed them; suggested explanations include flares or balloons, and no official cause was given.
Photo: Zarka Khalid, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media5 Jul 2004
The History Channel began UFO Files, a documentary series reviewing reported UFO sightings from the late 1940s onward. Episode guides list the first broadcast on July 5, 2004.
MediaJul 2004
USA Network premiered The 4400, a miniseries about a large group of missing people, possibly alien-abduction victims, who suddenly return all at once. Trade reports said its debut set a basic-cable ratings record for a new series.
Sightings12 Jun 2004
A 1.3 kg stone came through the roof of the Archer family's home in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie and bounced off a couch, with no one hurt. It was confirmed as a meteorite, one of only nine found in New Zealand, and was later bought by Auckland Museum.
Photo: Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0
