Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Government18 Dec 1978
After Grenada's prime minister Eric Gairy pressed the issue, the UN General Assembly adopted decision 33/426 on unidentified flying objects. Grenada's draft resolution for a UN agency on UFOs was never put to a vote, and the decision led to no lasting UN body.
Photo: White House, Public domain
Close encounters6 Dec 1978
Security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta radioed in shortly after midnight near Marzano di Torriglia, above Genoa, saying he had met tall beings. Carabinieri logged ground marks and local glare reports; he later described more encounters under hypnosis. A magistrate closed the file as no crime.
Photo: Davide Papalini, CC BY-SA 3.0
GovernmentDec 1978
After a Freedom of Information Act suit by the Arizona group Ground Saucer Watch, the CIA released roughly 1,000 pages of UFO-related records. The group said they showed agency interest in UFO reports long after the CIA said its study ended in 1952; the claims were the group's reading.
Government27 Nov 1978
At a UN Special Political Committee meeting on Grenada's UFO item, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, speaking with Grenada's delegation, said the phenomenon's scope was not recognized, and Jacques Vallee urged scientific study while saying there was no evidence UFOs were visitors from space.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Sightings26 Oct 1978
RCMP Constable James Blackwood and about a dozen residents reported a lit object hovering over the water between Clarenville and Random Island for about two hours before it rose and vanished. Blackwood said it mirrored his cruiser's lights. The Royal Canadian Mint marked the case on a 2020 coin.
Photo: Rioux Photography Edmonton, AB, Public domain
Sightings21 Oct 1978
Pilot Frederick Valentich, 20, radioed Melbourne Flight Service that a large unidentified object was hovering over his Cessna 182 above Bass Strait, then the transmission ended. Neither he nor the plane was found; the Department of Transport report said the cause was not determined.
Photo: Australian Department of Transportation, Public domain
Media14 Sep 1978
ABC premiered Mork & Mindy on Sept. 14, 1978, a spinoff of Happy Days starring Robin Williams as an alien from the planet Ork living in Boulder, Colorado. Its first season ranked third in the ratings, a peak for the friendly-alien sitcom.
Photo: ABC, Public domain
Whistleblowers29 Jul 1978
At the MUFON symposium in Dayton, researcher Leonard Stringfield presented 'Retrievals of the Third Kind', relaying claims from informants he kept anonymous that the U.S. military had recovered crashed craft and alien bodies. The claims were never verified.
Media30 Jun 1978
Disney released 'The Cat from Outer Space', a family comedy about an alien cat whose spaceship makes an emergency landing on Earth and is seized by the military, forcing him to seek human help to repair it.
GovernmentJun 1978
France's CNES UFO study group GEPAN, overseen by a council of senior scientists, presented its first results from 1977-1978 case inquiries in a June 1978 report to that council. CNES later said the findings showed cases worth further study; founding head Claude Poher left in October 1978.
Photo: Edal Anton Lefterov, CC BY-SA 3.0
SightingsMay 1978
In May 1978 Bolivian and Argentine media reported that an unidentified object had fallen on a hill in southern Bolivia near the Argentine border, that the area was cordoned off and that Bolivia sought U.S. help to identify it. A U.S. press-monitoring compilation recorded the conflicting reports.
Photo: Ruditaly, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media3 Apr 1978
At the 50th Academy Awards, Vilmos Zsigmond won the cinematography Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film also received a Special Achievement Award for sound effects editing, credited to Frank E. Warner.
Photo: Attilaphoto at Hungarian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media19 Feb 1978
NBC premiered Project U.F.O., a Jack Webb series in which Air Force investigators looked into sightings. Webb drew episode ideas from Project Blue Book files; the show ran until July 1979.
Photo: Photographer not credited, Public domain
GovernmentFeb 1978
Sen. William Proxmire gave NASA's proposed radio search for extraterrestrial signals his Golden Fleece award for wasteful spending. The funding was then removed from NASA's fiscal 1979 budget; a House subcommittee held the first congressional SETI hearings that September.
Photo: United States Senate Historical Office, Public domain
Government1 Feb 1978
NASA's Information Sheet 78-1 said NASA would answer public UFO inquiries sent to the White House but ran no UFO research program, and would analyze only bona fide physical evidence from credible sources, following its December 1977 reply to the President's science adviser.
Photo: Vargklo at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Sightings24 Jan 1978
The Soviet reactor-powered satellite Cosmos 954 reentered over western Canada and scattered radioactive debris across the Northwest Territories. Residents of Yellowknife and Hay River described a burning object trailing pieces; a joint U.S.-Canadian search followed. An identified sky event.
Photo: Federal Government of the United States, Public domain
Government1978
After the 1977 Petrozavodsk reports, the Soviet Union added two parallel studies of anomalous phenomena to its state research plan, one under the Defense Ministry and one under the Academy of Sciences. Participants later said most cases were explained by rocket launches and balloons.
Close encounters1978
A 1978 Gallup survey found 57 percent of Americans who had heard of UFOs thought they were something real rather than imagination, the highest result Gallup recorded with that wording. Gallup later noted that 'real' did not necessarily mean alien craft.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Media1978
After a mid-1970s run of local UFO reports, including a 1976 police officer account, the village of Elmwood began an annual UFO Days festival, one of the longest-running small-town UFO celebrations.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Media1978
Robin Williams first played the alien Mork from Ork in a Happy Days episode titled 'My Favorite Orkan'. The response led Garry Marshall to build the spin-off series Mork & Mindy around the character.
Photo: ABC, Public domain
