Topic
The books, broadcasts, films, podcasts and reporting that shaped what the public knows. 495 events, newest first.
Media25 Jul 2008
20th Century Fox released the second X-Files feature, which grossed about 21 million dollars in the U.S. Critics noted it set aside the alien-conspiracy arc for a stand-alone case, though its title echoed the series' 'I want to believe' poster slogan.
Photo: 20th Century Fox, Public domain
Media14 May 2008
Jesuit astronomer Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the possible existence of intelligent life elsewhere does not contradict faith in God. The remarks were his personal view, not church doctrine.
Photo: Jjstott, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media6 May 2008
Political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall argued in the journal Political Theory that a taboo keeps states and science from taking UFOs seriously, and that this taboo serves modern sovereignty, which is organized around humans alone.
Photo: Rion Hiun, CC0
Media4 Feb 2008
NASA transmitted the Beatles song 'Across the Universe' through its Deep Space Network toward Polaris, about 431 light-years away, marking the song's 40th anniversary, NASA's 50th and the Deep Space Network's 45th.
Media30 Jan 2008
History premiered UFO Hunters, a series following a UFO Magazine team investigating cases in North America and Europe, on 30 January 2008. The Sci Fi Channel launched an unrelated series with the same name the same night.
Media2008
Nuclear physicist and UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman published 'Flying Saucers and Science' with New Page Books, arguing that interstellar travel is feasible and criticizing scientists who dismiss UFO evidence and government secrecy.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media2008
Hong Kong director Stephen Chow released CJ7, in which a poor construction worker finds a small alien creature left behind by a spacecraft and gives it to his son. It was a large box-office success in China, while critics in the West were mixed.
Photo: Kit Liew, CC BY 3.0
MediaAug 2007
Online videos of saucers flying over Haiti spread widely in August 2007. Within about a week the Los Angeles Times identified their maker as a French computer animator, who said he made the clips as a test for a film project and did not expect them to go viral.
MediaApr 2007
Videos posted to YouTube in April 2007 claimed to show a secret 'Apollo 20' mission finding an alien craft and a body on the Moon. No Apollo 20 ever flew (the mission was canceled), and French artist Thierry Speth later said he made the videos as fiction.
MediaApr 2006
Ahead of a 2006 comedy film about them, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield said the 1995 'alien autopsy' footage was a re-creation they staged, which they called a restoration of film they claimed to have seen. Sculptor John Humphreys said he made the alien body.
Media4 Nov 2005
Walt Disney Pictures released the computer-animated 'Chicken Little', directed by Mark Dindal. The young bird mocked for claiming the sky was falling ends up facing a real alien invasion of his town.
MediaNov 2005
Iker Jimenez and Carmen Porter launched Cuarto Milenio on the new Spanish channel Cuatro. The long-running weekly program covers mystery, the occult, conspiracy and unexplained phenomena, with UFO cases among its regular subjects.
Photo: Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media21 Sep 2005
ABC premiered Invasion, Shaun Cassidy's drama in which a savage storm batters Homestead, Florida, and a family begins to suspect an alien takeover. Filmed before Hurricane Katrina, it debuted weeks after that storm.
Photo: Tony Barnard, Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0
Media16 Sep 2005
CBS launched Threshold, a Friday-night drama starring Carla Gugino as a contingency planner leading a secret government team after a hostile alien first contact. The title was the plan's code name. Variety praised it but doubted it would draw beyond a cult audience.
Photo: Sidewalks Entertainment, CC BY 3.0
Media9 Aug 2005
Philip J. Klass, the Aviation Week editor who spent decades arguing that UFO reports had ordinary explanations, died at 85 in Florida. He wrote several skeptical books on the subject.
Photo: Robert Sheaffer, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media29 Jun 2005
Paramount released Steven Spielberg's remake of H.G. Wells' alien-invasion story in U.S. theaters on 29 June 2005. It grossed about $234 million in North America and about $604 million worldwide.
Photo: Mr Bullitt, CC BY 3.0
Media16 Apr 2005
BBC One aired 'Aliens of London' in the first series of the revived Doctor Who. A spaceship crash-lands in the Thames, London is sealed off and the world goes on alert, in a two-part story featuring the alien Slitheen.
Media24 Feb 2005
ABC broadcast a two-hour prime-time special in which anchor Peter Jennings examined UFO reports from 1947 onward, interviewing pilots, police and military witnesses as well as skeptics. A syndicated preview called it measured and noted it offered no proof of a visiting spacecraft.
Photo: Sgt. John Queen, Public domain
Media6 Feb 2005
Fox previewed Seth MacFarlane's animated sitcom American Dad!, whose CIA-agent father shares his home with Roger, a space alien rescued from Area 51. The show began its regular Sunday run that May.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media2005
In a 2005 Science Channel documentary, Aldrin described a light that seemed to travel alongside Apollo 11. He later told the AP the interview was edited to omit his explanation: most likely sunlight off a panel shed by the spacecraft. The 1969 crew debrief records the sighting.
Photo: Neil A. Armstrong, Public domain
