Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media26 Jan 1967
NBC aired the Star Trek episode Tomorrow Is Yesterday, written by D.C. Fontana. The Enterprise is thrown back to the late 1960s, where the U.S. Air Force detects it as a UFO and sends a jet to intercept; the pilot is beamed aboard and must later be returned.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Close encounters25 Jan 1967
Betty Andreasson said small beings entered her home on a January 1967 evening after a power loss and a glow outside. Her detailed account emerged years later under hypnosis in a study led by Raymond Fowler, whose 1979 book popularized it. Skeptics suggest fantasy; no physical evidence was produced.
Photo: John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government25 Jan 1967
Early in the Air Force-funded Colorado study, project director Edward Condon told a Sigma Xi audience in New York state that his inclination was to recommend the government get out of the UFO business. Critics later cited the remark as a sign the study was prejudged.
Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public domain
Media10 Jan 1967
ABC premiered The Invaders, a Quinn Martin series starring Roy Thinnes as an architect who sees a saucer land and cannot persuade authorities that aliens are infiltrating society. It ran as a midseason replacement into 1968.
Photo: ABC Television, Public domain
Media1967
Researcher Ted Bloecher privately published a compilation of newspaper accounts from the summer 1947 flying saucer wave. NICAP describes it as the work he is best known for in UFO research.
Media1967
Alfredo B. Crevenna's film Santo el Enmascarado de Plata vs la Invasion de los Marcianos pits the masked wrestler Santo against Martians who land in Mexico and demand that humanity give up nuclear weapons. It was one of many Mexican lucha libre films with science-fiction plots.
Media17 Dec 1966
In a national magazine, Air Force consultant J. Allen Hynek wrote that most UFO reports had ordinary explanations but a small residue remained puzzling. He criticized how the Air Force handled the subject, called for real scientific study and said he had seen no evidence of a deliberate cover-up.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Sightings15 Nov 1966
Two couples told police they saw a man-sized winged creature with red eyes near the TNT area outside Point Pleasant; local papers covered it for weeks. John Keel's 1975 book later tied the reports to UFOs and the Silver Bridge collapse. It remains folklore.
Photo: USACE, Public domain
GovernmentNov 1966
During NASA's Gemini 12 flight, Jim Lovell reported four objects near the capsule and judged they were items the crew had thrown overboard. The Condon study agreed, finding the transcript shows four items were discarded, against claims by writer John Keel that only three were.
Photo: NASA/Jim Lovell, Public domain
Close encounters21 Oct 1966
J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's own scientific consultant on UFOs, published a letter in the journal Science urging scientists to give unexplained reports serious, scholarly study rather than dismissing the subject.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Government7 Oct 1966
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced a contract with the University of Colorado for an independent scientific study of UFOs, the project whose final report physicist Edward Condon summarized. The first contract gave $313,000 for 15 months starting November 1, 1966.
Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public domain
Government19 Sep 1966
The Air Force issued Regulation 80-17, replacing AFR 200-2, to set uniform procedures for investigating and reporting UFOs over the United States. It tied the program to air defense and required bases to keep a UFO investigative capability. Later changes pointed reports to the Condon study.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
MediaSep 1966
NBC began airing Star Trek, a weekly hour-long series about a multinational starship crew meeting alien civilizations. It ran only three seasons, to June 1969, but the Smithsonian calls it one of television's most influential shows and holds its Enterprise studio model.
Photo: NBC Television, Public domain
SightingsSep 1966
Gemini 11 astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon reported and photographed a large tumbling object on their 18th orbit. NORAD identified it as the Soviet Proton 3 satellite, and the Condon study's review of the photos suggested several pieces of that launch.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media17 Jul 1966
Tsuburaya Productions' Ultraman, about a giant alien hero who battles monsters and invaders alongside a human Science Patrol, aired its first episode at 7 p.m. It succeeded the studio's Ultra Q and grew into one of Japan's longest-running franchises.
Media8 May 1966
A Gallup poll taken April 14-19, 1966 found 5 percent of U.S. adults said they had seen something they thought was a flying saucer, which Gallup projected to more than five million Americans. Of those who had heard of saucers, 46 percent thought they were something real.
Government5 May 1966
The Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service issued a report by Robert L. Chartrand, assisted by William F. Brown, summarizing UFO reports, Air Force monitoring under Project Blue Book and public reaction. It came weeks after the April 1966 House Armed Services hearing on UFOs.
Photo: William Henry Jackson, Public domain
Sightings22 Apr 1966
Several residents and two police officers in Beverly, Massachusetts reported lights and a disc-like object over the high school field, one passing low over a witness. The Condon Report (Case 6) attributed most of the long observation to Jupiter but left the close encounter unexplained.
Photo: John Phelan, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings17 Apr 1966
Portage County deputies Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff said they chased a bright object from near Ravenna about 85 miles into Pennsylvania before dawn; officers elsewhere reported it too. Blue Book chief Hector Quintanilla attributed it partly to Venus, an answer the deputies and others disputed.
Photo: Project Blue Book, Public domain
Sightings6 Apr 1966
Students and teachers at Westall High School in suburban Melbourne reported a silvery object that descended toward a nearby property and then left; hundreds gathered on the oval. Local papers covered it, but authorities said they knew nothing and no official explanation was given.
Photo: WestallSC, CC BY-SA 4.0
