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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media25 Jul 1956
American International Pictures released Roger Corman's It Conquered the World, in which a scientist in radio contact with Venus helps a creature from that planet try to take over Earth. Paul Blaisdell designed and wore the alien costume.
Photo: American International Pictures, Public domain
MediaJul 1956
Columbia released Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, a science fiction film with saucer effects by Ray Harryhausen. Its credits say it was suggested by Donald Keyhoe's book Flying Saucers from Outer Space.
Photo: american film trailer screenshot (Columbia Pictures), Public domain
Media30 Mar 1956
MGM released Forbidden Planet, a big-budget science fiction film loosely based on The Tempest in which a future human crew travels by space cruiser to a distant world. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2013.
Photo: Loew's International (MGM), Public domain
Media5 Feb 1956
Allied Artists released Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which pods from space replace the people of a small California town with emotionless copies. Later critics read it as a Cold War allegory, and it popularized the term "pod people".
Photo: Distributed by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, Public domain
Media1956
Edward Ruppelt, former head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, published an inside account of its UFO investigations with Doubleday. In the book he wrote that he created the term 'UFO' to replace 'flying saucers'.
Photo: Associated Press, Public domain
Media1956
West Virginia writer Gray Barker's book retold Albert Bender's claim that three men in black suits silenced his saucer club in 1953, bringing the Men in Black idea to a wide audience. Researchers have since questioned how much of Barker's writing was in good faith.
Media1956
After Morris Jessup's 1955 book The Case for UFO's, a writer calling himself Carlos Allende sent him letters claiming the Navy made a ship invisible in 1943, and an annotated copy of the book reached the Office of Naval Research in 1956. ONR says no such experiment was ever conducted.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Close encounters1956
Festinger, Riecken and Schachter published their study of a Chicago-area group whose leader predicted a cataclysm and rescue by flying saucer in December 1954. It became a foundation of cognitive dissonance theory; a 2025 paper drawing on Festinger's unsealed papers disputes its account.
Close encounters1956
Missouri Ozarks resident Buck Nelson published a booklet claiming that disc-shaped craft visited his Mountain View home in July 1954 and that friendly spacemen later flew him to Mars, the Moon and Venus. He went on to host annual Spacecraft Conventions at his farm. Locals were openly skeptical.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Media5 Dec 1955
Retired Marine Maj. Donald Keyhoe's third UFO book, published by Henry Holt, charged that the Pentagon was keeping what it knew about UFOs from the public. Kirkus described it as his case for official secrecy, unexplained air crashes and sightings.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Military8 Oct 1955
After a private visit with Gen. Douglas MacArthur in New York, Naples mayor Achille Lauro told reporters the general believed nations might one day have to unite against attack from other planets. The often-quoted West Point version of the remark is not supported by the record.
Photo: Caulfield, Public domain
GovernmentOct 1955
Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles made public the Battelle statistical analysis of saucer reports (Special Report 14), saying the Air Force found no sign of technology beyond known science. Critics later argued the study's 'unknowns' were not resolved by the data.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Close encounters21 Aug 1955
Eleven people at the Sutton farm near Kelly, Kentucky, reported small glowing creatures around the house through the night and fired guns at them. City and state police and military police from Fort Campbell searched and found shell casings but no other trace. Skeptics later proposed owls.
Media10 Jun 1955
Universal-International's Technicolor science-fiction film, in which an alien recruits Earth scientists for his war-torn planet Metaluna, had its world premiere in New York. It was one of the bigger-budget entries in the 1950s alien-film cycle.
Photo: Universal-International, Public domain
Government5 May 1955
Blue Book Special Report No. 14, a statistical analysis of about 3,200 reports through 1952 carried out with Battelle Memorial Institute, judged it highly improbable that the unidentified cases reflected technology beyond known science. The Air Force made it public in October 1955.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Close encounters1955
London cab driver George King founded the Aetherius Society in 1955, saying he had made contact with alien beings who passed on guidance for humanity. The group still reports thousands of members, with centers in London, Los Angeles and Auckland.
Photo: Hjamesberglen, CC0
Media1955
Former RAF pilot Derek Dempster founded Flying Saucer Review in London in 1955. A Gale reference entry says it was seen as uncritical under editor Brinsley le Poer Trench (1956-59) but later, under Charles Bowen, became one of the most influential UFO journals.
Sightings1955
UFO researcher Arai Kin'ichi founded the Japan Flying Saucer Research Association in 1955. It reportedly grew past 1,000 members; novelist Mishima Yukio joined in 1956 and wrote for its bulletin Uchuki in 1957.
Photo: Ken Domon, Public domain
Government15 Dec 1954
Asked about European saucer investigations and claims the Air Force suspected extraterrestrial origins, President Eisenhower said nothing new had reached him and that a trusted Air Force source had told him it was inaccurate to think they came from another planet.
Photo: White House, Public domain
Close encounters29 Nov 1954
Delivery men Gustavo Gonzalez and Jose Ponce told Caracas police that in Petare they met a small, hairy, very strong being and that Gonzalez grappled with it; later retellings add several beings and a glowing craft. It became a noted episode of the 1954 Venezuela wave, with no physical evidence.
Photo: Andres Gerlotti agerlotti, CC0
