Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media16 Sep 1963
ABC premiered Leslie Stevens' science fiction anthology The Outer Limits with The Galaxy Being, about a radio engineer who contacts an alien made of energy. Its February 1964 episode The Bellero Shield was later cited by skeptic Martin Kottmeyer in discussing the Hill abduction account.
Photo: ABC Television, Public domain
Sightings15 Feb 1963
Farmer Charles Brew reported a domed object descending near his milking shed at Willow Grove, near Moe, Victoria. RAAF officers interviewed him and judged it most likely a weak tornado-like weather effect; the Department of Air said it could not reach a firm conclusion.
Photo: JU580 at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Media1963
Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel and Lyle Boyd published 'The World of Flying Saucers' with Doubleday, Menzel's second skeptical UFO book. It argued that reports from Kenneth Arnold onward could be explained by natural phenomena, misperception and atmospheric effects.
Photo: Fdavis99 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military1963
Hector Quintanilla succeeded Lt. Col. Robert Friend at the Air Force's Project Blue Book and led it until it closed in December 1969, through the Socorro case and the 1966 Michigan sightings. His later unpublished memoir defended the Air Force's handling of reports.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
Sightings5 Sep 1962
A fiery reentry over Wisconsin before dawn left a roughly 20-pound metal chunk in a Manitowoc street, found by two police officers. Laboratory analysis tied it to Sputnik 4, a Soviet test spacecraft, making it a well-documented case of space debris rather than a UFO.
Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military9 Jul 1962
The U.S. detonated a thermonuclear warhead about 250 miles above Johnston Atoll. In Hawaii a bright flash was followed by a red, aurora-like glow for hours, some streetlights failed and Kauai's inter-island links were cut: a man-made sky display, not an unknown object.
Photo: Unknown, Public domain
Government24 May 1962
On the Aurora 7 orbital flight, astronaut Scott Carpenter found that rapping the inside of his capsule released clouds of the glowing 'fireflies' John Glenn had reported. He judged them to be frost or ice flaking off the spacecraft, an explanation NASA accepted.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media2 Mar 1962
CBS aired To Serve Man, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone adaptation of Damon Knight's 1950 story about seemingly benevolent aliens, the Kanamits. Its 'It's a cookbook!' twist became one of television's best-known lines about trusting visitors from space.
Photo: CBS Television, Public domain
Government20 Feb 1962
On the first U.S. orbital flight, John Glenn reported thousands of glowing specks he called 'fireflies' drifting past Friendship 7. On the next Mercury flight Scott Carpenter released similar showers by tapping the hatch, and NASA's history links them to frost on the capsule.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Close encounters1962
Several British UFO research groups and individuals came together at an inaugural meeting in Kensington, London, to form the British UFO Research Association, which describes itself as a non-cultist, scientifically evaluative body.
MilitaryDec 1961
The Avrocar, a disc-shaped vertical-takeoff craft built by Avro Canada and taken over by the U.S. Army and Air Force in 1958, proved unstable above about three feet and topped out near 35 mph. The project was cancelled in December 1961. Its saucer shape drew comparisons with 'flying saucers'.
Photo: Bzuk at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Media3 Oct 1961
BBC Television began 'A for Andromeda', a seven-part serial by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot in which a radio signal from the Andromeda galaxy carries instructions for a computer that goes on to create a living being.
Photo: Rights NRAO/AUI/NSF Photographer Woodruff T. Sullivan III Photo Credit NRAO/AUI Archives,..., CC BY 4.0
Close encounters19 Sep 1961
Betty and Barney Hill said a bright object followed their car on a night drive through New Hampshire's White Mountains, and under hypnosis in 1963-64 described being taken aboard a craft. Their story drew wide coverage from 1965 on, and a state historical marker now stands in Lincoln.
Military1 Jul 1961
The Air Force replaced its Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center with the new Foreign Technology Division under Air Force Systems Command at Wright-Patterson. Project Blue Book records from then until the end of 1969 are filed under FTD's Aerial Phenomena Branch.
Photo: AF Historical Research Agency, Public domain
Media26 May 1961
CBS aired Rod Serling's episode in which state troopers follow up a report of a crashed spaceship and question snowbound bus passengers at a roadside diner, trying to work out which one is from another world.
Photo: CBS Television-CBS Portrait by photographer Gabor Rona-mark is faint in spots., Public domain
Close encounters18 Apr 1961
Wisconsin resident Joe Simonton said a saucer landed in his yard and its occupants handed him pancakes after he gave them water. The Air Force and NICAP looked into the report; the pancakes were analyzed and found to be ordinary, and the story was largely dismissed.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Media27 Jan 1961
CBS's The Twilight Zone aired 'The Invaders', a nearly wordless episode in which Agnes Moorehead plays a farm woman fighting off intruders from a landed flying saucer. The twist reveals the crew came from Earth, making humans the alien invaders.
Photo: RKO Pictures, Public domain
Media1961
Ten scientists, including Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and Philip Morrison, met at the Green Bank radio observatory for the National Academy of Sciences' Space Science Board. Drake's equation, used to frame the talks, became the standard way to estimate how many civilizations might exist.
Photo: Raphael Perrino, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentDec 1960
A Brookings Institution study done for NASA proposed research on the social effects of space activities, including how the public might react to discovering intelligent life or artifacts on the Moon, Mars or Venus, and whether such news might be presented to or withheld from the public.
Photo: Gryffindor, Public domain
Military15 Sep 1960
Edward J. Ruppelt, the Air Force officer who led the UFO project during the 1952 wave and later wrote a book about it, died of a heart attack on September 15, 1960, at age 37.
Photo: Associated Press, Public domain
