Culture and science
Movies, series and documentaries, from Close Encounters to Skinwalker Ranch on TV. 178 events, newest first.
Media19 Feb 1978
NBC premiered Project U.F.O., a Jack Webb series in which Air Force investigators looked into sightings. Webb drew episode ideas from Project Blue Book files; the show ran until July 1979.
Photo: Photographer not credited, Public domain
Media26 Nov 1977
Around 5:10 pm, a distorted voice claiming to speak for an alien intelligence replaced Southern Television's news sound for almost six minutes, apparently by jamming the Hannington transmitter. The IBA investigated; no culprit was ever identified, and it is generally treated as a hoax.
Photo: Matthew Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Nov 1977
Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its premiere in New York. Its title uses a term coined by Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who was credited as a technical adviser. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Photo: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media20 Jun 1977
Anglia Television's 'Science Report' aired 'Alternative 3', a spoof documentary with actors claiming missing scientists were being taken to a secret Mars colony. Meant for April Fools' Day, it ran on June 20; viewers flooded Anglia with calls, and some still treat it as real.
Photo: Spudgun67, CC0
Media18 Mar 1976
Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth premiered at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, with David Bowie in his first major film role as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien visiting Earth.
Photo: Jean-Luc, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media20 Oct 1975
NBC broadcast The UFO Incident, a TV movie dramatizing Betty and Barney Hill's account of a 1961 abduction, based on John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey. James Earl Jones played Barney Hill and Estelle Parsons played Betty Hill.
Media24 Mar 1975
Saturday Review Press/Dutton published John Keel's account of his 1966-67 investigation of 'Mothman' sightings, strange lights and visitors in West Virginia. Keel framed the events as 'ultra-terrestrial' rather than extraterrestrial; the book was loosely adapted into a 2002 film.
Photo: Jacket design by Peter Parnell, Public domain
MediaOct 1974
NBC aired the TV movie The Disappearance of Flight 412, starring Glenn Ford. Two Air Force fighters vanish while intercepting radar UFOs, and the surviving crew is held at a remote base and pressed to deny what they saw. It dramatized the idea of an official UFO cover-up.
Photo: Alan Light, CC BY 2.0
Media1974
Robert Emenegger's documentary, hosted by Rod Serling, presented a possible 1964 alien landing at Holloman AFB. Emenegger later said officials had promised him real footage that never arrived, so the film used illustrations; only his account supports the promise.
Photo: CBS Television, Public domain
Media5 Jan 1973
NBC aired In Search of Ancient Astronauts, a U.S. version of the German Chariots of the Gods documentary narrated by Rod Serling. It promoted von Daniken's ancient-astronaut claims, which scholars regard as pseudoscience, and preceded the In Search of... series.
Photo: CBS Television; portrait by Gabor Rona, Public domain
Close encounters1972
Northwestern astronomer J. Allen Hynek, long a scientific consultant to the Air Force's UFO projects, published The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. It sorted reports into close encounters of the first, second and third kind, a scheme later echoed in Spielberg's 1977 film.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Media26 Apr 1970
Harald Reinl's West German documentary Erinnerungen an die Zukunft, built on Erich von Daniken's ancient-astronaut thesis, premiered aboard a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to New York. Scholars reject the thesis as pseudoscience, yet the film drew an Oscar nomination.
Photo: Michal Manas, CC BY 3.0
Sightings28 Sep 1969
Just before 11 a.m. a fireball broke apart over Murchison, Victoria, and residents heard a series of loud booms. They gathered fragments of a rare carbonaceous meteorite, in which scientists reported extraterrestrial amino acids in Nature in 1970.
Photo: Daderot, CC0
Military17 Jun 1968
On 16-17 June 1968, U.S. Air Force jets whose pilots took the radar returns of allied ships for enemy helicopters attacked several ships near the Vietnam DMZ, hitting HMAS Hobart and killing two sailors. In 1973 USAF chief Gen. George Brown described the episode as a series of UFO sightings.
Photo: RAN Public Relations, CC0
Media2 Apr 1968
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered at the Uptown Theater in Washington. The film signals alien intelligence only through a black monolith rather than showing aliens. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1991.
Photo: Warner Brothers, Public domain
GovernmentNov 1967
Moscow Aviation Institute astronomer Felix Zigel appeared on Soviet television asking viewers for UFO reports. In November 1967 AP reported that a commission led by Air Force Gen. Stolyarov was studying UFOs; the group was closed after about five months.
MediaNov 1967
Hammer released Roy Ward Baker's film of Nigel Kneale's serial Quatermass and the Pit, titled Five Million Years to Earth in the U.S. Workers extending the London Underground uncover an ancient Martian spacecraft. The story turns on Martians having visited Earth millions of years ago.
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Public domain
Media10 Jan 1967
ABC premiered The Invaders, a Quinn Martin series starring Roy Thinnes as an architect who sees a saucer land and cannot persuade authorities that aliens are infiltrating society. It ran as a midseason replacement into 1968.
Photo: ABC Television, 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.
Close encounters25 Oct 1965
The Boston Traveler began a five-day series by reporter John H. Luttrell, opening on its front page, on the Hills' claim that they were taken aboard a craft in 1961. The Hills had not consented; the series made them nationally known and preceded John G. Fuller's book on the case.
Military22 Sep 1964
Former Air Force Lt. Robert Jacobs claimed from 1982 that telescope film of a September 22, 1964 Vandenberg Atlas launch, shot from Big Sur, showed a craft circling the warhead and hitting it with a beam. Project engineer Kingston George said it showed decoys and debris, not a UFO.
Photo: SDASM Archives, Public domain
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
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
