Around the world
British cases and the Ministry of Defence UFO files. 79 events, newest first.
Government18 Feb 2010
The UK National Archives released 24 Ministry of Defence UFO files, over 6,000 pages covering 1994 to 2000. Highlights reported included a 1952 Churchill memo asking about flying saucers and a 1997 triangle report near Michael Howard's Folkestone home, which the MoD found no evidence for.
Photo: Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentDec 2009
The Ministry of Defence closed its UFO desk, hotline and email address after officials advised that no UFO report in over 50 years had shown a threat to the UK. The MoD stopped investigating sightings; files on the closure were released in 2013.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
GovernmentAug 2009
The National Archives put online a fourth batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files: 14 files, about 4,000 pages, spanning 1981-1996. Highlights included Rendlesham Forest correspondence, the 1989-90 Belgian wave and London sightings the MoD traced to an advertising airship.
Photo: Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentMar 2009
The UK National Archives opened a third batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files, mostly late-1980s and early-1990s reports. Highlights included the Calvine photographs, Tornado crews' 1990 report later traced to Soviet rocket debris, and a 1992 advertising airship mistaken for a UFO.
Sightings2009
The Ministry of Defence logged 643 UFO reports by late November 2009, triple its usual yearly count and second only to 1978 among recent years. Released files show many sightings were Chinese lanterns, and the surge fed the decision to close the MoD's UFO desk.
Photo: Moyan Brenn from Italy, CC BY 2.0
Close encountersNov 2008
Chris French's team at Goldsmiths compared 19 UK alien contact experiencers with matched controls. Experiencers scored higher on dissociation, absorption, fantasy proneness, tendency to hallucinate and reported sleep paralysis, but showed no difference in false-memory susceptibility.
Photo: Alex Blandford, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentOct 2008
The UK National Archives released a batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files that included the MoD record of a 1991 near miss reported by an Alitalia crew over Kent, which officials said had no clear explanation. The captain spoke publicly about it after the release.
Photo: G B_NZ, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings8 Jun 2008
A South Wales Police helicopter crew waiting to land at St Athan reported an unusual object that vanished over the Bristol Channel. Police denied tabloid claims of a chase, and a couple later said lanterns released at their nearby wedding were the likely cause.
Photo: Mick Lobb, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government14 May 2008
The UK Ministry of Defence began releasing its UFO files through The National Archives website, starting with sighting reports and MoD assessments dating back to the 1970s. The program ran until a tenth and final release in June 2013.
Photo: Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentMay 2006
After a Freedom of Information request, Britain's Ministry of Defence released Project Condign, a Defence Intelligence Staff study of UFO reports completed in December 2000. It said sightings could be explained by natural causes such as meteors and unusual atmospheric conditions.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters27 Sep 2004
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer best known for studying people who reported alien encounters, was struck and killed by a vehicle in London at age 74 while walking home from a T.E. Lawrence symposium.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings18 Jan 2000
A morning fireball brighter than daylight was seen across the Yukon and northern British Columbia. U.S. defense satellites recorded a 2-3 kiloton explosion, and a local guide found carbonaceous meteorites on the ice of Tagish Lake a week later.
Photo: Mike Zolensky, NASA JSC, Public domain
Government14 Oct 1997
Lord Hill-Norton tabled written questions in the House of Lords on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest reports, including the Halt memo and its radiation readings. The government replied that the MoD had judged the memo of no defence significance and would neither confirm nor deny nuclear storage claims.
Photo: Anefo (photographer unknown), CC0
Government1996
Through 1996, MP Martin Redmond put a run of written questions to ministers on UFOs and the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case. Answers recorded in Hansard said the MoD looked at reports only for defence significance and that John Major's government had no plans to fund research.
Whistleblowers1996
Nick Pope, who handled UFO reports for a Ministry of Defence division from 1991 to 1994, published a nonfiction account of official reactions to UFO reports drawn from that posting. The MoD's position was that it looked at reports only for defence significance.
Photo: David Howard, CC BY 2.0
Government30 Nov 1995
At a Christmas tree lighting in Belfast, President Bill Clinton answered a 13-year-old's letter by saying that, as far as he knew, no alien craft crashed at Roswell in 1947, and that if the Air Force had found alien bodies it had not told him.
Photo: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0
SightingsJan 1995
The crew of British Airways flight 5061 from Milan reported a lit, wedge-shaped object passing very close at high speed as they descended over the Pennines toward Manchester. A Civil Aviation Authority airmiss review later could not establish what the object was.
Photo: G B_NZ, CC BY-SA 2.0
Military31 Mar 1993
Police and military witnesses, including a patrol at RAF Cosford, made more than 30 reports of bright lights across central England over about six hours. MoD radar replays showed nothing unusual; most sightings were traced to the re-entry of the Russian rocket that launched Cosmos 2238.
Photo: N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings1992
After a first reported sighting on the Falkirk Road in 1992, the Scottish village of Bonnybridge became known for frequent UFO reports, often relayed through local councillor Billy Buchanan, who repeatedly asked UK ministers and prime ministers to investigate.
Photo: Kevin Rae, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings21 Apr 1991
Alitalia Capt. Achille Zaghetti reported a brown, missile-like object passing close to his Milan-London MD-80 near Lydd, Kent, and controllers saw an unknown radar target. MoD files released in 2008 show investigators ruled out missiles, balloons and rockets and left it unexplained.
Photo: G B_NZ, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government1991
By his own account, civil servant Nick Pope was given a Ministry of Defence desk handling unexplained cases in 1991, during a 21-year MoD career. He later became a public commentator on the subject.
Photo: David Howard, CC BY 2.0
Sightings4 Aug 1990
Two men photographed a large diamond-shaped object with a jet nearby near Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The Daily Record passed the pictures to the Ministry of Defence, which kept them. A surviving print held by a retired RAF press officer was made public by researcher David Clarke in 2022.
Photo: Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media1987
British author Timothy Good published Above Top Secret, a long compilation of official documents and testimony arguing that governments worldwide were hiding what they knew about UFOs. A 1997 CIA history cited it as a source of cover-up claims, and skeptic reviewers faulted its rigor.
Whistleblowers1986
Ralph Noyes, a retired senior Ministry of Defence official, wrote to the MoD in 1986 that in 1970 he had been shown RAF Venom gun-camera film of UFOs at a secret screening in MoD Main Building. The letter is among MoD UFO files released by The National Archives.
Media5 Jan 1985
Science writer Ian Ridpath argued in The Guardian that the Rendlesham Forest lights of 1980 were a bright fireball followed by the flashing Orford Ness lighthouse seen through the trees. It became the leading skeptical explanation; witnesses such as Col. Charles Halt rejected it.
Photo: David Merrett, CC BY 2.0
