Topic
The books, broadcasts, films, podcasts and reporting that shaped what the public knows. 495 events, newest first.
MediaJun 1958
Paramount released Jack Arnold's film in which an alien presence on a California beach takes control of children at a missile project and uses them to sabotage a launch. The AFI Catalog lists a June 1958 release.
Media8 Mar 1958
NICAP director Donald Keyhoe appeared on ABC's The Mike Wallace Interview, where Wallace pressed him on his claim that the Air Force was hiding the truth about UFOs. The kinescope survives in the Harry Ransom Center's Wallace collection.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Media22 Jan 1958
During the live CBS program 'UFO: Enigma of the Skies', the network cut the audio while NICAP director Donald Keyhoe spoke about material before Congress. CBS said he had departed from the approved script and denied censorship; UFO groups long cited the moment as a cover-up.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Media1958
Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung published Ein moderner Mythus, later translated as Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Jung set aside whether saucers were physical craft and treated the wave of sightings as a psychological and cultural response to an anxious era.
Photo: Francis Domiano, CC0
Media1958
French writer Aime Michel's 1958 book, published in English as Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery, argued that same-day sightings in the 1954 French wave fell on straight lines. Astronomer Donald Menzel later argued the alignments matched chance.
Media1958
Raymond Veillith started Lumieres dans la Nuit, a bimonthly French journal that became a leading outlet for UFO reports in France. It was relaunched by Joel Mesnard in 1988, and researchers have since used its run as a database of French sightings.
MediaDec 1957
Howco International released this low-budget science fiction film, in which a criminal alien brain from the planet Arous takes over a scientist's body and threatens Earth. The AFI Catalog lists a December 1957 release with a Los Angeles opening on Christmas Day.
Photo: Howco International, Public domain
MediaJul 1957
Columbia released 20 Million Miles to Earth, in which a U.S. spacecraft returning from Venus crashes off Sicily carrying a creature that grows to giant size. Ray Harryhausen animated the creature frame by frame.
Photo: Columbia Pictures, Public domain
MediaJul 1957
Columbia released William Asher's 'The 27th Day', in which an alien gives five people from different nations capsules able to wipe out humanity, testing whether they keep the peace for 27 days. The film mirrored Cold War nuclear fears.
Photo: trailer screenshot (Columbia Pictures), Public domain
MediaApr 1957
Twentieth Century-Fox released Kurt Neumann's Regal Films production about a giant energy-draining alien machine that lands off Mexico and heads for California's atomic stockpile. The AFI Catalog lists an April 1957 release.
Media1957
American International Pictures released Edward L. Cahn's teen comedy-horror film about small, bulbous-headed aliens who land in a flying saucer. Designed by Paul Blaisdell, its creatures fed the popular image of big-headed saucer occupants.
Photo: American International Pictures, Public domain
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
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
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
