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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
MediaFeb 1995
After Congress ended NASA's SETI program in 1993, the SETI Institute continued its targeted search with private donations as Project Phoenix, starting at the Parkes telescope. Through 2004 it examined about 800 nearby stars and reported no extraterrestrial signals.
Photo: division, CSIRO, CC BY 3.0
Media21 Jan 1995
At the 52nd Golden Globe Awards, The X-Files won best television series, drama, over ER, NYPD Blue, Chicago Hope and Picket Fences. It won the category again in 1997 and 1998, marking the show's move from cult hit to mainstream success.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0
SightingsJan 1995
The crew of British Airways flight 5061 from Milan reported a lit, wedge-shaped object passing very close at high speed as they descended over the Pennines toward Manchester. A Civil Aviation Authority airmiss review later could not establish what the object was.
Photo: G B_NZ, CC BY-SA 2.0
Whistleblowers1995
Hampton Roads published Unconventional Flying Objects by Paul R. Hill, a retired NASA Langley research manager, after his death. It applied aerospace engineering to reported UFO flight behavior; its conclusions are outside mainstream science.
Government1995
Sweden's Submarine Commission reported that hydrophone recordings once judged sure signs of foreign submarines were partly caused by swimming minks, and said other such recordings could likely be explained the same way. Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson also cited minks that year.
Photo: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings1 Dec 1994
Night-shift workers at a forest farm near Guiyang reported a roar, bright light and violent wind, and trees across a wide strip were snapped. A local UFO group proposed a hovering craft; academician Ouyang Ziyuan attributed the damage to a thunderstorm downburst.
Photo: Akira CA, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters19 Nov 1994
Psychologist Susan Blackmore argued in New Scientist that abduction accounts need not come from disturbed people: sleep paralysis may supply a real core experience, and suggestion and memory reconstruction can turn it into a vivid, sincerely believed abduction story.
Photo: Zooterkin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media28 Oct 1994
MGM released Roland Emmerich's Stargate, starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, which builds on the ancient-astronaut idea that an alien posed as an Egyptian god. It launched a long-running TV and film franchise.
Photo: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media14 Oct 1994
Fox aired the X-Files episode 'Duane Barry', in which a former FBI agent who believes he was abducted takes hostages and Mulder is brought in to negotiate. Barry later abducts Scully, and the follow-up 'Ascension' a week later leaves Mulder convinced she was taken by aliens or the government.
Media1 Oct 1994
TNT aired a two-hour live special, 'The UFO Cover-Up? Live From Area 51', with Larry King broadcasting a few miles from the base. A preview listed guests including Carl Sagan, Barry Goldwater and William Shatner, with debunkers alongside believers.
Photo: Simon Johansson, Public domain
Close encounters16 Sep 1994
About 60 children at the Ariel School outside Harare said they saw a craft land near the playground and figures beside it. A BBC crew filmed interviews days later, and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed pupils. Skeptics cite mass suggestion after a rocket re-entry fireball days earlier.
Sightings14 Sep 1994
On the night of 14 September 1994 a bright fireball display was reported over Zimbabwe and seen as far as Zambia and Botswana, two days before the Ariel School sighting. Investigator Cynthia Hind logged dozens of reports; astronomers attributed the display to meteors.
Government8 Sep 1994
Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall released a records search, prompted by a GAO inquiry requested by Rep. Steven Schiff, concluding the 1947 Roswell debris most likely came from Project Mogul, a then-secret balloon program to detect Soviet nuclear tests. It found no evidence of a crashed spacecraft.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
MediaJul 1994
Showtime aired Roswell, a TV film directed by Jeremy Kagan with Kyle MacLachlan as an Air Force intelligence officer revisiting the 1947 events and Martin Sheen in support. It dramatized claims that a flying saucer was recovered and the story covered up.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
Sightings14 Jun 1994
A fireball was seen and heard by many people around Montreal before dropping meteorites near St-Robert, Quebec. About 20 fragments totalling roughly 25 kg were recovered and classified as an H5 ordinary chondrite.
Close encounters25 Apr 1994
TIME reported that Donna Bassett, a Boston writer, said she invented an abduction story and faked hypnotic-regression sessions with Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who she said asked leading questions. Mack cited patient confidentiality; she repeated the account at a skeptics' conference in 1995.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
MediaApr 1994
Aerospace historian Curtis Peebles published 'Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth' with the Smithsonian Institution Press, a skeptical history arguing UFO reports stem from misidentifications, hoaxes and an evolving cultural myth.
Sightings24 Mar 1994
Scientists met in Hessdalen, Norway, in March 1994 for the first international workshop on the valley's recurring unexplained lights. Organized from Ostfold University College, it launched the second phase of Project Hessdalen and plans for instrumented study.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military1 Feb 1994
A meteoroid perhaps 4 to 14 m across exploded over the western Pacific, recorded by Defense Department infrared and Energy Department visible-light sensors in space. It was the brightest such blast those satellites had seen, and was later analyzed in published research.
Sightings28 Jan 1994
The crew of an Air France A320 flying Nice to London reported a large dark disk that changed shape and vanished near Coulommiers, while a military radar logged an unidentified 50-second track. GEIPAN ruled out a weather balloon and classes the case unexplained (D).
Photo: Aero Icarus from Zurich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0
