Topic
The books, broadcasts, films, podcasts and reporting that shaped what the public knows. 495 events, newest first.
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
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
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.
Media1966
Journalist John G. Fuller published The Interrupted Journey, a book written with Betty and Barney Hill's cooperation that told their 1961 experience and hypnosis sessions. It brought the idea of alien abduction to a wide audience.
Media1966
Jacques and Janine Vallee published 'Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma' with Regnery in Chicago. The book analyzed patterns in UFO reports by place, time and object type, and Kirkus called it the most rational of that year's UFO books.
Photo: Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1966
Journalist John G. Fuller published 'Incident at Exeter', a book-length account of the 1965 police and civilian sightings around Exeter, New Hampshire, and of other reports from that period.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Media1966
Holden-Day published Intelligent Life in the Universe, Carl Sagan's expanded translation of a book by Soviet astronomer I. S. Shklovskii. It weighed the odds of life elsewhere, radio contact, and claims of past alien visits to Earth.
Photo: A. T. Service, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media26 Sep 1965
Italy's Centro Ufologico Nazionale (CUN) traces its founding to a September 1965 meeting of a Turin UFO group, where members agreed to create a national body uniting the country's scattered civilian UFO associations.
Media12 Apr 1965
After Gennady Sholomitsky reported that radio source CTA-102 varied in brightness, TASS reported that Soviet scientists may have found a signal from a civilization, a story that spread worldwide. CTA-102 was soon identified as a quasar, a natural source.
Photo: Aladin Sky Server, Public domain
Media1965
Astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee published Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which classified historical and modern UFO reports and argued they deserved systematic analysis. Kirkus called it a usable manual of analytical methods for general readers.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1965
Toho released Invasion of Astro-Monster, the Godzilla film in which astronauts exploring the mysterious Planet X encounter the monster known as Monster Zero, setting off a battle between kaiju and humankind.
MediaJul 1964
NICAP released The UFO Evidence, edited by Richard Hall, which selected 746 reports from more than 5,000, favoring qualified and multiple witnesses. Copies went to congressional leaders and then to every member of Congress.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Media1964
Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev published 'Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations', classing hypothetical civilizations by the energy they can harness. The Kardashev scale remains a common reference in SETI and technosignature work.
Photo: Rights NRAO/AUI/NSF Photographer Woodruff T. Sullivan III Photo Credit NRAO/AUI Archives,..., CC BY 4.0
Media1964
Terence Fisher's low-budget British film 'The Earth Dies Screaming', from Lippert, shows a few survivors in an English village after alien-controlled robots wipe out most of the population and reanimate the dead.
Media1964
Tinto Brass directed Il disco volante, an Italian comedy in which a Carabinieri sergeant investigates reports of a saucer landing in a Veneto village. Alberto Sordi plays four roles, and the film uses the scare to satirize provincial society.
Photo: Gorupdebesanez, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media29 Sep 1963
CBS premiered the sitcom My Favorite Martian on Sept. 29, 1963, with Ray Walston as a Martian posing as the uncle of a reporter played by Bill Bixby. It ran 107 episodes over three seasons, bringing the visitor-from-space idea into family TV.
Photo: CBS Television, Public domain
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
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
