The chronicles mention that already in the 3rd century BC. people observed fiery anomalies in the sky that moved independently and destroyed buildings. Seneca and Anaxagoras also mentioned in their writings about the flying objects and light phenomena they observed. Even the Bible talks about visions that can be considered the appearance of UFOs - however, here they are called God's phenomena. The period of the Middle Ages is characterized by frequent visions of "flying chariots", then it was believed that there were enemy scouts in them. In the 13th Art. there is evidence of a flying object visiting England, and even the appearance of creatures. 15th century - the Irish describe the appearance of a disc-shaped object. 16th century - observation of luminous flying objects in the Yucatan. At the same time, multi-colored spherical objects were observed in Germany. 17th century - Bostonians saw an unusual rectangular object,who moved on his own, illuminating the distance around him. In the same century, light effects were seen here. 18th century - the British observed a fiery object. In the same century, Londoners saw a bluish flying object. At the same time in Italy, the police documented the appearance of a flying object, which burned the harvest of the peasants. At this time, evidence of the appearance of alien beings appeared.
Quite often, unusual phenomena were observed in the Middle Ages, which became part of the canvases of works by artists that captured what they saw for centuries. In the fifteenth century. The Italian artist Domenico Ghirlandino depicted an event that amazed his imagination on canvas. Fragments of his painting “ Madonna ” are shown below.
The history of mankind is full of stories about strange flying objects that now and then appear in the sky overhead. However, people became seriously interested in them only after the end of World War II It all began on June 24, 1947. A man named Kenneth Arnold said that he saw over the Rocky Mountains located in the northwest of America, a clear line of sparkling discs, 12-15 meters in diameter, which flew at an incredible speed for aviation of that time, 2700 kilometers per hour. According to his description, they "flew like saucers launched by someone"; from that day on, the name "flying saucers" firmly captured the imagination of the reading public. In the course of the official investigation, these "saucers" were given a more conservative name - "Unidentified Flying Objects". Since then, all strange celestial visitors have been called UFOs. Kenneth Arnold described them as follows:"They floated in the air like saucers tossed flat along the surface of the water." Kenneth Arnold's reputation was impeccable, he flew over 4000 hours, was an experienced pilot, with his light hand the post-war "era of flying saucers" began and the term "saucers" was fixed.
The first photo was taken on May 11, 1950 by the farmer Paul Trept in the presence of his wife in McMinville, Oregon at 7:30 pm, took two clear photos of a hovering object, similar to a plate. In mid-1960, an official Condon commission conducted a thorough examination of Trept's photographs and found them to be authentic. The conclusion of the commission read: "All tested factors, such as geometric, psychological and physical, confirm the presence of an unusual flying object, silvery, metal, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter and, obviously, artificial origin, the flight of which was observed by two eyewitnesses."
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In the early 90s, Trept's photographs were studied in detail by William Spelling using fundamentally new computer techniques that confirmed the authenticity of the photo and the presence of an unidentified disk-shaped object on them. The first armed clash took place on the night of August 21-22, 1955, adult members of the Sutton farm family in Kentucky opened pistol-rifle fire at three "aliens" emerging from a landing UFO. The bullets did not harm the "aliens". The first mass stop of car engines was recorded during a UFO encounter on November 2, 1957, on Highway 116 near Lee Welland, Texas, dozens of drivers and several police officers became participants and witnesses of one of the most amazing stories associated with UFOs. This story is carefully documented and still hasn't been satisfactorily explained. From 11 pm to 2 am “a spherical ball of light with a diameter of 60 meters hovered over moving cars, causing their engines to stall. When the object soared upward, the cars would start up again and could move on …”.
Official UFO investigations. As new weapons were being tested in the armed forces of some countries at that time, it was suspected that reports of unknown phenomena in the atmosphere could be associated with these tests. The US Air Force began collecting and organizing UFO reports in 1948 in order to determine their military significance. Civilian scientists and engineers were involved in this work. The analysis of the collected facts for the CIA and the leadership of the US Army was carried out several times. This work, known as Project Blue Book, continued with varying degrees of activity until 1969. A big resonance in July 1952 caused several reports of visual and radar UFO sightings near Washington National Airport. Given the public and government attention to these reports, the CIA sent fact-finding instructions to the army and intelligence,and created an expert panel of engineers, meteorologists, physicists and astronomers to analyze incoming reports, led by physicist H. Robertson (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena). Having studied the facts, experts came to the conclusion that 90% of UFO reports have an astronomical or meteorological explanation: the vast majority of them are associated with the observation of the Moon and bright planets (especially Venus), clouds and auroras, birds, airplanes, balloons, rockets, meteors, searchlights and other phenomena, understandable to professionals, but occurring in unusual conditions or observed by insufficiently qualified eyewitnesses. One of the members of the commission, the famous American astronomer Donald Menzel (DH Menzel), published in 1953 the book Flying Saucers,in which he explained the nature of some UFO sightings.
Interest in UFOs increased in the early years of the space age. From the USA, it spread to Western Europe, the USSR, Australia and other countries. A second commission to study UFO reports worked in the United States in February 1966 and came to the same conclusions as the first. However, some scientists and engineers remained dissatisfied with the work of these commissions; especially active opponents of the "natural" UFO hypothesis were meteorologist James McDonald (University of Arizona at Tucson) and astronomer Allen Hyneck (Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois). These scientists believed that some UFO reports clearly indicated the existence of aliens. In 1968, commissioned by the US Air Force, the University of Colorado organized a group of 37 experts under the leadership of the prominent physicist and atomic energy specialist Edward Condon (EUCondon). The UFO Scientific Research group's report was reviewed by a special committee of the US National Academy of Sciences and published in early 1969. It analyzed 59 UFO reports in detail. In "Conclusion" Condon categorically rejects the "extraterrestrial hypothesis" and recommends that further study of the problem be stopped. By this time, 12,618 UFO reports had been collected in the Blue Book project archive. All of them were either “identified” with one of the known phenomena (astronomical, atmospheric or artificial), or “unidentified”, often due to the low information content of the message. Based on the Condon Report, Project Blue Book was closed in December 1969. The only official and fairly complete archive of UFO reports was the Canadian one, containing about 750 reports and transmitted in 1968 from the Department of Defense to the Science Council of Canada. There were also comparatively small archives in official institutions in Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Greece.
In general, other commissions that have studied UFO reports have come to the same conclusions as the Condon Commission. In France, it was the Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEPAN = Groupe d'Etude des Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non-Identifies), which had been working since 1977. In the USSR, this conclusion was made by a group of experts working on the "Grid" theme of the Ministry of Defense and the Academy of Sciences (1978-1990). True, it was noted that individual well-documented UFO sightings still failed to provide an exhaustive scientific explanation. The first public federal organization for the study of UFOs was created in 1956 in the United States "Organization for the Study of Aerial Phenomena" with an authoritative composition: R. H. Hillencoter (first chief of the CIA), senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, two ministers, professors, journalists. This organization still exists under the name "National Research Committee on Air Phenomena".
Perhaps the most famous UFO crash in our century was and remains the crash that occurred in the United States in 1947 at Roswell. There, the US military found a wrecked unknown object, as well as a crew of several humanoids. Later, the wreckage of the apparatus and the corpses of the aliens were taken out for research and storage at various American Air Force bases. It is believed that the incident at the Foster Place ranch is directly related to the UFO crash in Rosswell. According to one version of the UFO, flying over the ranch was struck by a powerful lightning bolt, which led to the partial destruction of the UFO and its debris falling to the ground. The flying saucer, flying another 240 kilometers, fell in the area of the San Augustin plateau, and the next day it was discovered. The military took the disk with the crew and confiscated the wreckage that the owner of the farm had managed to collect. Reporters,who learned about the wreckage of the UFO said that a meteorological balloon fell on the territory of the ranch … On July 2, 1947, twilight fell on the Foster Place ranch earlier than usual. A strong wind blew, the sky was clouded with thunderclouds, thunder rumbled in places. William Brazel stood in the middle of the yard and rejoiced at the gathering rain, as it was the driest area in New Mexico, also in the driest month of the year. Blinding flashes snatched from the darkness pieces of a dull plain, overgrown with sparse and tough grass that could only feed unpretentious sheep. But, despite a severe thunderstorm, Brazel did not wait for rain. In those places, this is not uncommon - lightning flashes in the sky, the strongest thunder rumbles, and the rain passes by, barely sprinkling the ground. Back in the house, Brazel dropped in to see the children. Having run for the day, they slept soundly, not paying attention to the thunderstorm. At that moment,when Brazel crossed the threshold of his room, she lit up with such a bright light, as if several of the brightest lightning struck at the same time near the window, and the whole house shook. After the deafening rumble, it became completely dark and quiet. In the morning, in his old jeep, Brazel went to visit the sheep in the paddock. Several posts of the fence were knocked down. The owner missed about a dozen sheep. In search of the missing sheep, the farmer drove out to a vacant lot, dazzled with some objects. At first, Brazel thought a weather balloon had fallen. Because they were often brought from secret training grounds near Alamogordo. But, coming closer, Brazel realized that this was not a probe. After the deafening rumble, it became completely dark and quiet. In the morning, in his old jeep, Brazel went to visit the sheep in the paddock. Several posts of the fence were knocked down. The owner missed about a dozen sheep. In search of the missing sheep, the farmer drove out to a vacant lot, dazzled with some objects. At first, Brazel thought a weather balloon had fallen. Because they were often brought from secret training grounds near Alamogordo. But, coming closer, Brazel realized that this was not a probe. After the deafening rumble, it became completely dark and quiet. In the morning, in his old jeep, Brazel went to visit the sheep in the paddock. Several posts of the fence were knocked down. The owner missed about a dozen sheep. In search of the missing sheep, the farmer drove out to a vacant lot, dazzled with some objects. At first, Brazel thought a weather balloon had fallen. Because they were often brought from secret training grounds near Alamogordo. But, coming closer, Brazel realized that this was not a probe. Brazel realized it was not a probe. Brazel realized it was not a probe.
Remembering yesterday's thunderstorm, a blinding flash, a deafening rumble, I realized that it was an explosion. Regular plane! Every evening a plane flew over the ranch towards Socorro to the southwest. After the sheep returned to the pen, the fence was rebuilt and the children were fed, Brazel went to the wasteland to inspect the wreckage. The first thing he lifted from the ground startled him. A rag, thin as foil, seemingly metallic, but completely weightless. It could be crumpled and bent as desired, but it immediately took on its original shape. Breisel had a piece in his hands - almost without weight. Balsa wood? But the sharp knife didn't scratch it. He brought up a lighter - the imaginary tree was not even charred. Brazel continued to pick up the strange debris. The thinnest silk cord seemed to spread itself in the hands, but when he tried to break it, nothing came of it. On a black metal plate, Braisel found something like a monogram or hieroglyph. Unidentified flying objects have become commonplace in recent decades. They were seen by tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries around the world.