July 8th Today in History

1947 — Roswell UFO Mania Begins

On this day in 1947, the Roswell Daily Record mistakenly reported that soldiers at the Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico had recovered the remains of a crashed flying saucer from a local ranch the previous day. Although authorities quickly refuted this claim, the Roswell incident eventually sparked a nationwide flying saucer craze.

On July 7, 1947, soldiers at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) in New Mexico discovered the wreckage of a flying saucer that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

This news was reported the following day in the Roswell Daily Record, as indicated by the headline of the RAAF’s press release.

This wasn’t the first time such an object had been reported. Two weeks earlier, pilot Kenneth Arnold had witnessed nine mysterious objects flying through the sky in Washington state. Arnold described the objects as crescent-shaped, but the media focused on his description of them skipping through the air like saucers over water, leading to the widespread adoption of the term “flying saucer.”

The news inspired New Mexico rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel to contact the sheriff on July 8. In June, Brazel had discovered debris scattered across parts of his ranch and began to suspect that it was part of a flying saucer. Consequently, the military launched an investigation and issued the now-famous press release.

However, just a day after the announcement, the army air force retracted its claim. They stated that the remains were not from a flying saucer but rather from a crashed weather balloon. Despite this retraction, Brazel remained skeptical, but the incident gradually faded from public attention.

It was during this period that Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore published a book titled “The Roswell Incident.” This book presented a different perspective, claiming that the weather balloon was a cover story and that the government had actually found an alien spacecraft. While the book faced criticism and was disputed, it sparked the growth of conspiracy theories surrounding the Roswell incident. Supporters of the book presented evidence to support its thesis, and although much of the evidence proved to be fabricated, Roswell continues to be a focal point of UFOlogy to this day.

Berlitz and Moore were correct about one thing: the Air Force didn’t find a weather balloon on that July day. In fact, the debris was from an anti-Soviet spy balloon.