Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Sightings5 Apr 2001
Richard Haines and Dominique Weinstein of the civilian group NARCAP reviewed about 1,300 pilot reports and found 57 alleging electromagnetic effects, mostly radio and compass trouble, when UAP were nearby. They framed the reports as a possible flight-safety issue deserving study.
Media30 Mar 2001
Nickelodeon premiered Jhonen Vasquez's animated series Invader Zim, about an incompetent alien invader from the planet Irk who tries to conquer Earth from a suburban house. It developed a cult following after its short original run.
Photo: Super Festivals from Ft. Lauderdale, USA, CC BY 2.0
Sightings23 Mar 2001
Russia deliberately deorbited the Mir space station into the South Pacific. Witnesses in Fiji described white fireballs streaking across the sky and sonic booms, a planned reentry that produced a vivid light show rather than an unexplained event.
Photo: GW (Wikimedia Commons user), Public domain
Whistleblowers2001
Steven Greer published 'Disclosure: Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in History', compiling claimed testimony from pilots, air traffic controllers and others plus documents he says prove a UFO cover-up. The claims remain unverified.
Sightings2001
NARCAP issued French researcher Dominique Weinstein's catalog of UAP sightings by military, airline and private pilots from 1916 to 2000 as its Technical Report 4. It compiles pilot reports from many countries into a single reference list.
MediaOct 2000
Astronomers Ivan Almar and Jill Tarter proposed a 0 to 10 scale for rating the importance and credibility of any announced evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, at a 2000 congress in Rio de Janeiro. The IAA SETI committee adopted it in 2002.
Photo: Attila Magyar - Kossuth kiado, CC BY-SA 3.0
WhistleblowersAug 2000
Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper's memoir Leap of Faith, written with Bruce Henderson, says that in 1957 at Edwards AFB camera crew filmed a saucer-shaped craft landing, and that the film was sent to the Pentagon on orders and never heard of again. No official record of it has been confirmed.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
SightingsAug 2000
Scientists from Italy's CNR radio astronomy institute at Medicina and Ostfold College ran radio receivers in Hessdalen for 25 days to study its recurring lights. Their preliminary report described anomalous VLF signals and sightings, with any physical models offered as speculative.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings6 May 2000
A daytime fireball over the Czech Republic was recorded by videographers, seismographs, an infrasound station and satellites, and meteorites were recovered. Scientists called it one of the best documented falls ever, a benchmark for analyzing bright sky events.
Photo: Czech Wikipedia user Packa, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media1 Apr 2000
Historian Richard Dolan published the first volume of 'UFOs and the National Security State', a history of U.S. government handling of UFOs from 1941 to 1973 built on declassified records, which argues the government hid what it knew.
Photo: David Maluenda, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings18 Jan 2000
A morning fireball brighter than daylight was seen across the Yukon and northern British Columbia. U.S. defense satellites recorded a 2-3 kiloton explosion, and a local guide found carbonaceous meteorites on the ice of Tagish Lake a week later.
Photo: Mike Zolensky, NASA JSC, Public domain
Sightings5 Jan 2000
Before dawn, a Highland business owner and police officers in Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt and Dupo, Illinois, reported a large, low, slow object with bright lights, which some described as triangular. The FAA suggested an advertising blimp; witnesses and some researchers dispute that.
Photo: Xing979 at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Sightings2000
Former NASA research scientist Richard Haines wrote NARCAP's first technical report, 'Aviation Safety in America: A Previously Neglected Factor', arguing that pilot encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena are under-reported and can affect flight safety.
Media2000
Journalist Leslie Kean wrote about a 1999 French report on UFOs by retired officers and experts (the COMETA report) for the Boston Globe, which ran it after about six months of pitching. Kean later said the paper heavily edited it. She went on to co-write the 2017 New York Times story.
Close encounters2000
The American Psychological Association's 'Varieties of Anomalous Experience', edited by Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley Krippner, included a chapter by Stuart Appelle, Lynn and Leonard Newman reviewing abduction reports: prevalence, aftereffects, psychopathology and proposed explanations.
Photo: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0
Media2000
Rancher Judy Messoline built a small viewing platform and campground in Colorado's San Luis Valley, an area with sighting reports since the 1960s. She told NPR it began as a joke to draw highway traffic; it now logs visitor-reported sightings.
Photo: Plazak, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media25 Dec 1999
DreamWorks released 'Galaxy Quest', a Star Trek parody in which aliens called Thermians, who received broadcasts of an old TV show and took it as fact, recruit its has-been cast to save them from an invading warlord. It won the Hugo for best dramatic presentation.
MediaNov 1999
Stanford astrophysicist Peter Sturrock published 'The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence', built on the 1997 Pocantico review in which scientists heard case evidence. It concluded some cases merit study and called for systematic data collection.
Close encountersNov 1999
Psychiatrist John Mack's book, first published by Crown, drew on a decade of interviews with experiencers and argued their encounters were about spiritual change and ecological warning more than physical aliens. It reports experiencers' claims, not verified events.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media6 Oct 1999
The WB premiered Roswell, a teen drama based on Melinda Metz's Roswell High novels in which a small-town high schooler learns that a classmate is an alien tied to the alleged 1947 crash in Roswell, New Mexico.
Photo: 20th Television, Public domain
