Around the world
Cases and official files from Mexico, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and beyond. 34 events, newest first.
SightingsFeb 1977
Rancher Angel Maria Tonna said a very bright object descended over a corral at Estancia La Aurora in northern Uruguay, damaging fences and cutting power. The Air Force UFO commission CRIDOVNI, formed in 1979, says no element of such cases points to an extraordinary origin.
Photo: Despuesdelauna, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings3 May 1975
Mexican private pilot Carlos Antonio de los Santos radioed Mexico City airport's control tower that three unidentified objects were flying around his light Piper aircraft and that his controls moved on their own. He landed safely. A recording said to be his call circulated widely in 2023.
Photo: Jonmallard, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1974
At a ceremony marking an upgrade of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, scientists beamed a short pictorial radio message toward the globular cluster M13, about 21,000 light-years away. The SETI Institute notes a reply is unlikely ever to come.
Photo: Arne Nordmann ( norro ), CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings4 Sep 1971
A Costa Rican government mapping aircraft at 10,000 feet photographed a disc-shaped image over Lago de Cote that no one aboard saw; the frames before and after did not show it. Researchers Richard Haines and Jacques Vallee analyzed copies in 1989 and could not identify it.
Photo: Sergio Loaiza, Public domain
Sightings8 Feb 1969
A fireball at about 07:05 GMT broke up over Chihuahua and scattered about two tonnes of stones across a field roughly 48 by 7 km near Pueblito de Allende. The carbonaceous chondrite became one of the most studied meteorites in history.
Photo: H. Raab, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings21 Oct 1963
Members of the Moreno family and a household worker said several glowing objects hovered near their estate and the railway line for about 40 minutes, casting beams and leaving a sulfur smell. A police officer filed a report and a wire story reached foreign papers within days.
Photo: User:Ignaciogimenez, CC BY-SA 3.0
MilitaryFeb 1960
In February 1960 Argentina's navy closed Golfo Nuevo and spent weeks chasing sonar and radar contacts it described as one or two unidentified submarines, with U.S. equipment sent to help. No vessel was ever found or identified; TIME noted sonar can mistake whales or wrecks for submarines.
Photo: Horacio_Fernandez, CC BY 3.0
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
Media12 Feb 1949
Radio Quito aired an unannounced Spanish adaptation of The War of the Worlds describing a Martian invasion. When listeners learned it was fiction, a crowd set fire to the building housing the station and the newspaper El Comercio, and several people died.
