Key figures

Stanton Friedman

The nuclear physicist who revived the Roswell story in 1978. 5 events, newest first.

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2010s

Media

Nuclear physicist and UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman dies

Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who lectured on UFOs for five decades and whom a colleague called the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash, died at 84 at Toronto Pearson airport while returning home to Fredericton. He said he never saw a UFO himself.

Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0

2000s

Close encounters

Friedman and Marden publish 'Captured!' on the Betty and Barney Hill case

Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill's niece, published 'Captured!' with New Page Books. It retells the 1961 Hill abduction claim, drawing on the Hills' papers, letters and audiotapes, which Marden held as conservator, and compares their hypnosis sessions.

Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0

1990s

Media

UPN airs Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County

UPN aired the mock documentary Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, a TV remake of Dean Alioto's 1989 McPherson Tape. Many viewers took it as real and some local papers ran notices that it was fiction, while some UFO researchers, including Stanton Friedman, argued it reflected a real tape.

Media

Stanton Friedman publishes 'Top Secret/Majic'

Nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton Friedman published 'Top Secret/Majic', defending the authenticity of the disputed Majestic-12 papers, which describe a secret Truman-era group handling a recovered saucer. The papers' authenticity is widely disputed, and skeptics call them fakes.

Photo: AllenS, Public domain

Media

Friedman and Berliner publish 'Crash at Corona'

Nuclear physicist turned UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner published Crash at Corona (Paragon House), arguing the U.S. military recovered a crashed UFO in New Mexico in 1947 and hid it. Air Force reports in the 1990s instead tied the Roswell accounts to balloon projects.

Photo: AllenS, Public domain