Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
GovernmentDec 1977
On July 21, 1977, Frank Press, science adviser to President Carter, wrote to NASA Administrator Robert Frosch proposing a panel to check for significant new UFO findings since the Condon Report. About five months later NASA answered that neither a research effort nor a symposium was justified.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media26 Nov 1977
Around 5:10 pm, a distorted voice claiming to speak for an alien intelligence replaced Southern Television's news sound for almost six minutes, apparently by jamming the Hannington transmitter. The IBA investigated; no culprit was ever identified, and it is generally treated as a hoax.
Photo: Matthew Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Nov 1977
Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its premiere in New York. Its title uses a term coined by Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who was credited as a technical adviser. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Photo: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government7 Oct 1977
In a General Assembly address, Grenada's Prime Minister Eric Gairy urged the UN to set up an agency or ad hoc committee to study unidentified flying objects, said he had seen one himself, and noted Grenada had put the item on the session's agenda.
Photo: White House, Public domain
MilitaryOct 1977
After residents of Colares and nearby Para coastal towns reported lights in the sky, a Brazilian Air Force team from Belem logged sightings and took photographs into 1978. The Air Force says the files went to the National Archives; no explanation covers every report.
Sightings20 Sep 1977
Before dawn, residents of Petrozavodsk in Soviet Karelia reported a huge glowing object shedding beams of light for about 10 minutes, and Soviet papers carried the story. Soviet researchers later attributed it to the launch of the Kosmos-955 satellite from Plesetsk.
Photo: Antonio Bonanno from Milan (Italy), Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government20 Aug 1977
Voyager 2, the first of NASA's two Voyager probes to launch, carried a gold-plated copper record with images, natural sounds, music and greetings in 55 languages, meant to tell any spacefaring finder about life on Earth. Voyager 1 followed weeks later with a copy.
Photo: NASA/JPL, Public domain
Sightings15 Aug 1977
Ohio State's Big Ear radio telescope logged a strong narrowband signal that astronomer Jerry Ehman later circled and marked 'Wow!' on the printout. It was never detected again; Ehman called its origin an open question.
Photo: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO), Public domain
Media20 Jun 1977
Anglia Television's 'Science Report' aired 'Alternative 3', a spoof documentary with actors claiming missing scientists were being taken to a secret Mars colony. Meant for April Fools' Day, it ran on June 20; viewers flooded Anglia with calls, and some still treat it as real.
Photo: Spudgun67, CC0
Government1 May 1977
France's space agency CNES set up GEPAN, a unit in Toulouse to collect and analyze reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena, with engineer Claude Poher as its first head. It became SEPRA in 1988 and GEIPAN in 2005, and still operates.
Close encountersMay 1977
Stanford's Peter Sturrock mailed a UFO questionnaire to 2,611 American Astronomical Society members; 1,356 replied. Most said the subject certainly, probably or possibly deserved study, and 62 said they had seen or recorded something unidentified they thought might be UFO-related.
Sightings4 Feb 1977
About 15 Broad Haven Primary pupils said they saw a silver cigar-shaped craft in a field behind the school; some described a figure in a silver suit. The MoD got their drawings but offered no explanation. An RAF officer suspected a prankster; a local man admitted a silver-suit prank in 1996.
Photo: Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0
SightingsFeb 1977
Rancher Angel Maria Tonna said a very bright object descended over a corral at Estancia La Aurora in northern Uruguay, damaging fences and cutting power. The Air Force UFO commission CRIDOVNI, formed in 1979, says no element of such cases points to an extraordinary origin.
Photo: Despuesdelauna, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media1977
J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's longtime scientific consultant on Project Blue Book, published The Hynek UFO Report, drawing on Blue Book material to criticize how the Air Force handled UFO reports. MUFON reissued it in 2020.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Sightings1977
Through 1977, residents around Broad Haven and Little Haven in Pembrokeshire reported lights, craft and silver-suited figures, a flap the press called the Dyfed or Broad Haven Triangle. MoD files show an RAF Brawdy officer checked a hotelier's report; a local man later admitted a silver-suit prank.
Photo: Celuici, CC0
Media1977
W. Todd Zechel, Brad Sparks and attorney Peter Gersten formed Citizens Against UFO Secrecy to press for release of government UFO records through FOIA requests and lawsuits. Its 1980 suit against the NSA ended with the agency withholding its records on national security grounds.
Close encounters1977
Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for biography for 'A Prince of Our Disorder', his study of T. E. Lawrence. The prize gave unusual standing to his later research with people reporting alien encounters, which other academics criticized.
Media1977
Doubleday published The UFO Enigma by astronomer Donald Menzel and Ernest Taves, with an introduction by Fred Whipple. Appearing after Menzel's death in late 1976, it was his final book offering conventional explanations for UFO reports.
Photo: Fdavis99 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
MediaDec 1976
Astronomer Donald Menzel, a leading skeptic who explained UFO reports as natural and atmospheric effects, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Physics Today ran an obituary by Owen Gingerich in May 1977; his last UFO book appeared after his death.
Photo: Fdavis99 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military12 Nov 1976
Three soldiers on guard at the Talavera la Real air base said they heard noises, then saw a glowing figure about three meters tall and fired at it; a search the next day found no casings or bullet marks. A Spanish analyst later blamed hallucination, fear and shared hysteria.
Photo: Franky sp, CC BY-SA 3.0
