This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. (November 2024) |
This is a timeline of key events surrounding unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
20th century
edit- 1950 - American aviator Donald Keyhoe published the book The Flying Saucers Are Real.[1]
- 1950 - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence organized the Flying Saucer Working Party, an investigative committee for UFOs. They released a report in the following year which attributed UFO sightings to misidentifications, hoaxes or delusions.[2]
- 1952 - The United States Air Force started Project Blue Book, which was headquartered at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
- 1953 - The Robertson Panel, headed by American mathematician and physicist Howard P. Robertson, was formed to investigate the wave of UFO sightings reported to the Project Blue Book in 1952.
- 1962 - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence started the UFO desk, a telephone hotline for collecting UFO sighting reports.[3]
- 1967 - The Falcon Lake Incident occurred, followed by investigations from various Canadian and US governmental agencies.[4]
- 1968 - An US public hearing, Symposium on unidentified flying objects, was held by the 90th United States Congress.[5]
- 1969 - Release of the Condon report.[6]
- 1969 - The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) was established by Allen R. Utke, Walter H. Andrus Jr., John F. Schuessler, and others.[7]
- 1972 - J. Allen Hynek published his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry.
- 1973 - The Center for UFO Studies was founded by American astronomer J. Allen Hynek.
- 1973 - The governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter filed an UFO report with MUFON from his personal experience.
- 1974 - The documentary film UFOs: Past, Present, and Future directed by Ray Rivas was released. It received a nomination for the 33rd Golden Globe Awards.[8]
- 1975 - Jacques Vallee published his book The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influences on the Human Race.
- 1977 - The French Space Agency formed the research unit GEPAN, later renamed to GEIPAN (French: Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés) for the investigation of the UFO phenomena. The first director of the unit was Claude Poher.[9]
- 1978 - Italy experienced a wave of UFO sightings that were reported in news outlets. The Italian Air Force was orderd by the prime minister Giulio Andreotti to start documenting UFO cases.[10]
- 1987 - Timothy Good published his book Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-Up.[11]
- 1994 - Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack published his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.
- 1996 - The Varginha UFO incident occured in Brazil, receiving extensive media coverage.[12]
- 1999 - The COMETA report, titled Les OVNI et la Défense: à quoi doit-on se préparer? (UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?), was published.
2000s
edit- 2007 - The Chicago Tribune reported the 2006 O'Hare International Airport UFO sighting, causing widespread public attention.[13][14]
- 2007 March - The French agency GEIPAN publishes its UFO database online.[15][16][17]
- 2007 - The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was established by the United States Department of Defense. The information was only made public in 2017.
- 2008 - Robert L. Hastings published the first edition of his work UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.
- 2009 December - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence closed its UFO desk.[18]
2010s
edit- 2010 January - Richard M. Dolan and Bryce Zabel published their book A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact.
- 2010 August - Leslie Kean pubslished her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.
- 2010 September - A press conference involving first-hand UFO witnesses was organized by Leslie Kean and others at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C..[19]
- 2012 July - Michael D. Swords and Robert Powell published the book UFOs and Governments: A Historical Inquiry.
- 2015 January - John Greenewald Jr. released over 130,000 pages of declassified United States Air Force documents relating to UFOs.[20]
- 2015 October - The UFODATA project was announced.[21]
- 2017 October - To the Stars Academy was founded by Jim Semivan, Harold E. Puthoff, and Tom DeLonge.[22]
- 2017 December - The New York Times pubslished an article written by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper in the front page of to expose the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.[23]
- 2019 February - Religious scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka published her book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.
- 2019 May - The History Channel aired the first season of its documentary series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, featuring Lue Elizondo as a main narrator and Tom DeLonge as one of the producers.
2020 - 2025
edit- 2020 - Enigma Labs was founded by Alex Smith to collect UFO data.[24][25]
- 2020 April - Andrew McGrillen started That UFO Podcast on YouTube.[26]
- 2020 August - The United States Department of Defense announced the establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The move also called for the use of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena instead of UFOs.[27][28]
- 2020 October - James Fox released the documentary film The Phenomenon.
- 2021 May - The International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER) was launched.[29]
- 2021 June - The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force released the report titled Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.[30]
- 2021 October - Australian journalist Ross Coulthart published his book In Plain Sight: A fascinating investigation into UFOs and impossible science.
- 2022 March - The Canadian government released 500 pages of UFO sightings report for the past 20 years.[31]
- 2022 May - United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held the first public hearing on UFOs in 50 years. Scott Bray and Ronald Moultrie testified in the hearing.
- 2022 July - The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense. Sean M. Kirkpatrick was named its first director.
- 2022 September - The Canadian Office of the Chief Science Advisor launched the Sky Canada Project.[32]
- 2022 December - The United States Department of Defense suggested to change the name of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to account for unidentified submerged objects and trans-medium objects.[33]
- 2023 January - The National Geographic channel aired the docuseries UFOs: Investigating the Unknown.[34]
- 2023 February - The Society for UAP Studies held its inaugural symposium.[35]
- 2023 April - The Scientific Coalition For UAP Studies released its first report, UAP Pattern Recognition Study 1945-1975 US Military Atomic Warfare Complex.[36][37]
- 2023 June - American former intelligence officer and whistleblower David Grusch was interviewed by Ross Coulthart on NewsNation, where he claimed the existence of decades-long crash retrieval and reverse engineering program organized by the U.S. federal government.
- 2023 July - A congressional hearing on UAP was organized where David Fravor, Ryan Graves, and David Grusch testified their claims.[38]
- 2023 November - American journalist Garrett Graff published his book UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There.
- 2024 January - Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies from the Society for UAP Studies published its first issue.
- 2024 March - AARO released the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, stating that no verifiable evidence that UAP sightings represented extraterrestrial activities.[39]
- 2024 June - American historian Greg Eghigian published his book After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.[40]
- 2024 August - Luis Elizondo published his memoir Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.
- 2024 October - The first Global Disclosure Day event was launched by the New Paradigm Institute.[41]
- 2024 November - Subcommittees of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing under the title Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth. The experts who testified include Timothy Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger, and Mike Gold.[42]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Flying Saucers are Real, by Donald E. Keyhoe". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "My time as a UFO investigator for the government". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Meier, Allison (2017-11-13). "Declassified Drawings from the British Government's UFO Desk". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Falcon Lake incident is Canada's 'best-documented UFO case,' even 50 years later". 2017.
- ^ "Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress". www.govinfo.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Boffey, Philip M. (1969-01-17). "UFO Study: Condon Group Finds No Evidence of Visits from Outer Space". Science. 163 (3864): 260–262. Bibcode:1969Sci...163..260B. doi:10.1126/science.163.3864.260. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17790249.
- ^ "A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUFON". MUFON.
- ^ "U.F.O.s: Past, Present and Future". Golden Globes. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "GEIPAN - A body to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena".
- ^ "Dischi volanti sull'Italia". Il Tascabile (in Italian). 2019-01-04. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Timothy Good (1988). Above Top Secret: the Worldwide UFO Cover-Up.
- ^ "Tale of Stinky Extraterrestrials Stirs Up UFO Crowd in Brazil". The Wall Street Journal. 1996.
- ^ Hilkevitch, Jon (2007-01-07). "THEY'RE HERE!". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Vintage Chicago Tribune: 'Close encounters' with UFOs in Illinois!!!!!". Chicago Tribune. 2022-05-12. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Le GEIPAN ouvre ses dossiers".
- ^ "France opens up its UFO files". New Scientist. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "French get a look at nation's UFO files". NBC News. 2007-03-23. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "UFO sightings: Files explain why MoD closed down special desk". BBC News. 2013-06-20. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Aliens land ... in the headlines". NBC News. 2010-09-27. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "UFO enthusiast releases 130K pages of Air Force docs on UFOs to the web | abc7chicago.com". abc7chicago.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Scientists to monitor skies for UFOs | Human World | EarthSky". earthsky.org. 2015-11-02. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "To The Stars Academy Of Arts & Science Launches Today". markets.businessinsider.com.
- ^ "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program - The New York Times". The New York Times. 7 March 2023. Archived from the original on 2023-03-07.
- ^ "UFOs are going mainstream". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "UFO Buzz Inspires Tech Startup to Track Incidents, Expose Hoaxes". Bloomberg.com. 2022-07-12. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "That UFO Podcast". That UFO Podcast. 17 April 2023.
- ^ "Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force". U.S. Department of Defense.
- ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Eghigian, Greg. "UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Research (ICER), International Coalition for Extraterrestrial. "New Global Organization Launches International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER)". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena". www.dni.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Here Are 20 Years of UFO Sightings We Got From the Canadian Government". VICE. 2022-03-01. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "What is the Sky Canada Project and its importance? - New Space Economy". newspaceeconomy.ca. 2024-09-27. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Vincent, Brandi (2022-12-20). "Pentagon changes 'UAP' terminology as it looks to investigate unexplainable sightings across all domains". DefenseScoop. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ UFOs: Investigating the Unknown (Documentary), Leslie Kean, Chris Mellon, Robert Powell, 2023-01-17, retrieved 2024-11-14
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ "Limina's Inaugural Symposium". Society for UAP Studies. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Studies, Scientific Coalition of UAP (2023-04-05). "UAP Pattern Recognition Study 1945-1975 US Military Atomic Warfare Complex". The SCU. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Hanks, Micah (2023-06-22). "The Nuclear Connection: UAP and the Atomic Warfare Complex". The Debrief. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "U.S. recovered non-human 'biologics' from UFO crash sites, former intel official says". NPR. 2023-07-27.
- ^ "DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology". U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ published, Jeff Spry (2024-06-26). "Take a deep dive into UFO history in 'After the Flying Saucers Came' by Greg Eghigian (exclusive)". Space.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Global Disclosure Day – New Paradigm Institute". newparadigminstitute.org.
- ^ "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth". United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. 2024-11-19. Retrieved 2024-11-14.