FAMOUS UFO CASES

Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction story Sept. 19, 1961,

2011-09-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

LINCOLN, N.H.—Fifty years after Betty and Barney Hill reported seeing a flat, cigar-shaped craft hovering over them in New Hampshire's White Mountains, the state has put up a historical marker noting their close encounter with a UFO.

Returning from a vacation in Canada on Sept. 19, 1961, the Hills arrived home in Portsmouth puzzled by stains and tears on Betty's dress, scuffs on Barney's shoes and shiny spots on their car. Their watches weren't working.

When they got home, they realized they had "lost" about two hours of time. They called family and reported the event to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth the next day.

Barney, who had binoculars, later told science investigators that he could see figures on the craft. The couple also reported seeing a fiery orb. In 1964, they underwent a series of taped hypnosis sessions -- recalling they had been abducted and physically examined by "men" who did not appear to be human. Paintings and a sculpture of their descriptions depicted them with large, bald heads, slanted eyes and gray skin.

"They dragged me, kicking and screaming," Betty told The Associated Press in a 1986 interview.

In 1965, their story, known to only a small circle of investigators, close friends and family, was leaked to the Boston Traveler, which published it. Their UFO experience was described in a best-selling book in 1966, "The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard A Flying Saucer," by John Fuller; a 1975 television movie starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons, "The UFO Incident"; and numerous speaking engagements. Last week, Hollywood writer-producer Bryce Zabel, who developed the UFO conspiracy series "Dark Skies" in the 1990s, said he is planning to make a new film about the couple's experience.

In July, the state erected a historical marker to the "Betty and Barney Hill Incident" in Lincoln near some cabins at the Indian Head Resort on Route 3, one of the last places the couple recalled seeing that night.

The resort is the site of a conference Sept. 23-25 devoted to what the state marker describes as "the first widely-reported UFO abduction report in the United States." Kathleen Marden, the Hills' niece, will give a guided tour of places they stopped at during their encounter.

"How many states have courage enough to do something like that? Even the state of New Mexico hasn't put up a plaque for Roswell," asked Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who was the first civilian investigator of the Roswell incident, a purported UFO crash on a ranch in July 1947. The military later declared it was a top-secret weather balloon.

Friedman has authored papers and books on his UFO research, including one co-authored in 2007 with Marden, "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO

"I started off kind of neutral," Friedman said when he first heard of the Hills' story back in the 1960s. "After meeting with them, I was very impressed with them. ... I saw no enlargement at all, no attempt to make more of the story than was there."

Friedman, another conference speaker, said the state marker gives some credibility to UFO sightings and research.

Michael Stevens of Farmington, who started a petition for the marker in 2008, said the state's Division of Historical Resources was "very clear from the get-go that they weren't necessarily backing that the event happened.

"What they could back up -- the report and the cultural effect it had -- was in and of itself historical, and that's what they could go on to get the marker through," he said.

Stevens said he had no connection to the case or to the Hills; he said he's just always been interested in their story. "I just thought it was one of those important things that history was going to overlook because it didn't fit into society's little box of `normal." The one-paragraph marker was backed up by 20 footnotes and 28 references that Marden provided to the state.

The Indian Head Resort is dedicating its own bronze plaque to the Hills next weekend. It's also having fun with the event -- the gift shop has alien-themed green golf balls, lollipops, "UFO Crossing" signs -- even a juicer shaped like a flying saucer.

"One of the things we're hoping to do with this event is to explore the potential for this being a UFO `destination,' similar to the area around Roswell," said Stew Weldon, resort marketing manager.

The Irving Notch Express gas station on Route 3 in Lincoln also pays tribute with a mural of an alien and a flying saucer. Inside, it sells alien-themed hats and balloons -- and summarizes what happened in what it claims is the "First Rest Room Museum Dedicated to Alien Abduction."

The gas station is at the site of what used to be a farmer's field and apple orchard where Barney had said the UFO descended, hovering less than 200 feet above him and his wife.

Chris Berlo, a gas station cashier, said some people who have dropped by have full knowledge of the Hills' story. Others ask, `What's with the aliens?'"

Marden, who was 13 at the time, recently put together a self-guided tour of the places where her aunt and uncle stopped that night, in response to a number of queries. She was a teacher and social worker before beginning research on the story in 1990.

"I think I had always secretly harbored the desire to investigate this for myself, to attempt to determine whether or not it was real or fictitious -- not that they would have made it up, but that perhaps the abduction was more of a fantasy event than a reality," Marden said.

"I believed, I always believed, that they had a close encounter with an unidentified flying object," she said. She believes her aunt and uncle were telling the truth about their capture.

Marden, who grew up in Kingston but now lives in Clermont, Fla., said the couple weren't seeking attention.

"They never wanted this to be released to the public. It would be the worst thing that could have happened to them. They were prominent citizens in the state of New Hampshire and in their community."

The interracial couple -- he was a U.S. Postal Service worker, she was a social worker -- were actively involved in civil rights causes. "They were both members of the NAACP, the state and regional board." She said the governor appointed him to serve on the New Hampshire advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Marden said they were afraid of losing their jobs -- which didn't happen -- not to mention their reputations. But after meeting with family members, they decided to speak publicly.

Betty died in 2004 at age 85; Barney died in 1969 of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 46.

In 2009, the University of New Hampshire held an exhibition and seminars devoted to the Hills. Betty's dress and other artifacts are part of UNH's special collections. Betty was a 1958 UNH graduate.

"I think that she wanted to make sure the materials were available for serious study," said David Watters, director of UNH's Center for New England Culture. "She said to me that she wanted the dress to be preserved, so that when our science caught up with alien science that it would be able to determine what the chemicals were on her dress, for example. Or the star chart that she made under hypnosis -- some day she thought it would be possible to have that confirmed through astronomy."

In 1991, Betty told The Associated Press she was retiring from making public appearances because of her age and her "disappointment in the way the UFO field is headed." She said too many people with "flaky ideas, fantasies and imaginations" were making UFO reports.

"If you don't know the answers to something, you can always dream them up, whether they are true or not," she said. "A lot of the UFO field certainly is not sticking to the facts."

Edwin Fuhr UFO Encounter Saskatchewan, Canada, September 1, 1974

2011-02-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

In 1974, Canadian farmer Edwin Fuhr was tending to his crops on a clear September afternoon. At around 11:00 AM as he was inspecting his fields he noticed a bright metallic object a few feet away. What he perceived at first to be some practical joke that someone might be pulling on him, quickly developed into fear as he noticed that the object was hovering a few feet off the ground and spinning at tremendous speeds.

Mr. Fuhr, just 36 years of age, had never seen anything like it. He described the object as a worn out metallic looking bell. It had been hovering above some grass and seemed to have deep grooves carved on its side. Below is the sketch Mr. Fuhr provided for the investigators after they arrived at the scene to investigate the aftermath.
This object was not alone. In utter amazement, he then realized that there were at least 4 more of these objects. Hovering and spinning, these objects started to gain elevation before zipping off into the sky.

Terrified, Fuhr’s reaction was to immediately inform the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When the
RCMP arrived, they instantly noticed some weird patterns pressed onto the grass. The patterns, resembling miniature crop circles, were measured and photographed. The RMCP determined that there were no tracks of anyone wheeling in any equipment that could be responsible to producing these. Within days, as newspapers picked up the story, the Center for UFO Studies in Illinois sent a representative in order to investigate.

Not finding any signs of a hoax, both the RCMP and the Center for UFO Studies released a statement saying that they believed that whatever Mr. Fuhr encountered that day was something real.

January 20 1996-The New Roswell: Brazil UFO Crash

2011-02-19T07:42:00.000-08:00

The Varginha UFO incident was an incident in Varginha, Brazil, in 1996 involving popular reports of unidentified flying objects and strange creatures (allegedly extraterrestrials) which were supposedly captured by Brazilian officials.

The case generated extensive publicity in Central and South America, and was mentioned in The Wall Street Journal.

The Brazilian government officially denies that anything unusual occurred, but some theorists have charged that there was a cover up. Skeptics cite the lack of reliable sources as evidence against its actuality; the testimony of unnamed, anonymous “official” individuals are frequently featured.

UFO investigator Kevin D. Randle writes that “this case is as complicated as any other in the UFO field.” Randle notes that there is a lack of physical evidence supporting the case, and adds, “In fact, we have been unable to verify much of anything.
According to media reports, the creature was first sighted by three women ranging from 14 to 21 years old: sisters Liliane and Valquíria Fátima Silva, and their friend Kátia Andrade Xavier. They allegedly saw the creature in the afternoon of January 20, 1996: A biped about 1.6 metres (5 ft), with a large head and very thin body, with V-shaped feet, brown skin, and large red eyes. It seemed to be wobbly or unsteady, and the girls assumed it was injured or sick. The creature was said to have a strong, unpleasant odor. Some have noted physical similarities between this alleged creature and the chupacabra, a cryptozoological creature reported in Puerto Rico and Central America.

The Silva sisters say they fled, then told their mother that they had seen the devil. She didn’t believe them at first, but when she had gone to the area they had seen the creature and smelled a strong ammonia-like odor, her opinion changed. After relating their tale to family and friends, rumors began to spread throughout the city: UFOs were sighted, aliens were captured. Two days later, another creature was allegedly found lying along a road. Three military trucks were sent to retrieve it. It was captured by S2 officials (Brazil’s military intelligence), and sent to a hospital to be examined.

As related by Moffett in the Wall Street Journal, “The army finds itself besieged on several fronts. A local mystic predicts that Varginha will suffer some kind of cataclysm this September as retribution for its blitzkrieg on the interplanetary visitors. An armed-forces news conference marking ‘Victory Day’ in World War II degenerated into a shouting match between a general and a television reporter pressing him about the extraterrestrials. An official briefing to debunk UFO conspiracies was overshadowed by an auto mechanic’s claim to have seen yet another weird cylindrical aircraft, a cosmic encounter he re-enacted with the aid of an aluminum coffee thermos … Stanton Friedman, a Canada-based UFO expert, says Varginha has the makings of a ‘cosmic Watergate.’”

Brazilian mass media was saturated for some time with speculation, rumors and accounts regarding the UFO’s and the strange creatures. A soldier, Marco Eli Cherese, was said to have died under mysterious circumstances related to the UFO affair.

Vitorio Pacaccini, a Brazilian UFO enthusiast, became a central figure in the Varginha affair. He appeared on television, offering testimony he reported was from reliable government officials, which confirmed the events as true. The sources, however, were anonymous, said Pacaccini, and feared reprisal. Randle notes that Pacaccini insists that the first to encounter the strange creature was not the girls, but rather, a group of fire department workers. In the early morning of January 20, according to Pacaccini, four firemen were alerted to a strange animal which had been first spotted by a group of boys, who began throwing rocks at it. They captured the dizzy creature, and whisked it away.

Moffett writes that there have been over half a dozen sightings of the creatures, though “it is unclear how all of these beings could have fit into the minivan-sized spacecraft that was spotted here in January.” There was disagreement as to whether one creature had been sighted multiple times, or if several creatures had been sighted individually.

Officials in Varginha denied that anything unusual occurred, but considered dedicating a park to the creatures.

On the other hand, this incident made the city very famous, bringing numerous ET tourists. Now, the UFO tourism has become an important commercial activity of Varginha city. Many “Grey” dolls with famous football team uniforms are on sale in the main streets.

February 3, 1937 Billy Meier Case

2011-02-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

"Billy" Eduard Albert Meier (February 3, 1937) is a citizen of Switzerland who claims to be a UFO contactee and prophet. He is also the source of many controversial UFO photographs, which he states are evidence of his encounters. Meier reports regular contact with extraterrestrials who impart spiritual and philosophical wisdom. He describes the Plejaren (aliens from the Pleiades) as humanoid.
Background:A farmer born in the town of Bulach in the Swiss Lowlands, Eduard "Billy" Meier's claimed his first extraterrestrial contacts occurred in 1942 at the age of five with an elderly extraterrestrial human man named Sfath. Contacts with Sfath lasted until 1953. From 1953 to 1964 Meier's contacts continued with an extraterrestrial human woman named Asket. Meier says that after an eleven year break, contacts resumed again (beginning on January 28, 1975) with an extraterrestrial human woman named Semjase the granddaughter of Sfath.

In his teens, Meier joined the French Foreign Legion but says he soon left and returned home. He traveled extensively around the world pursuing spiritual exploration, covering some forty-two countries over twelve years. In 1965 he lost his left arm in a bus accident in Turkey. In 1966 he met and married a Greek woman, Kalliope, with whom he has three children. The nickname "Billy" came by way of an American friend who thought Meier's cowboy style of dress reminded her of "Billy the Kid". This anecdote was told by Meier himself in an interview with Bob Zanotti of Swiss Radio International in June, 1982.

Meier has accumulated a large collection of controversial photographs showing alleged spaceships (called beamships) as well as alleged extraterrestrials (humanoids called the Plejaren). Meier says that the Plejaren gave him permission to photograph and film their beamships in order to produce some of the evidence for extraterrestrial visitation.Meier's claims are disputed by UFO skeptics as well as some UFO enthusiasts.

Many Meier proponents and believers exist among UFO enthusiasts, and his evidence has seen increased exposure through the efforts of an American representative, Michael Horn,who has appeared on popular late-night paranormal programs such as Coast to Coast AM.

Contact:

Beginning in 1975, Meier says he began his official contacts ("official" in that evidence was to be provided publicly, unlike earlier contacts), communicating both directly (face-to-face) and by telepathy with a core group of the Pleiadians/Plejaren, or Errans as he also refers to them (Erra being their home planet), who gave their names as "Ptaah", "Semjase", "Quetzal" and "Pleja",among numerous others. According to Meier himself in the video documentary 'Contact', he says that his first contact with extraterrestrials began on January 28, 1975.

These visitors reportedly hail from the Plejares star system which is beyond the Pleiades and in a dimension that is a fraction of a second in the future from our own (an alternate timeline). These Plejaren have allegedly afforded Meier a more interesting sampling of evidence than that derived from most such encounters, including highly detailed photography, videos, multi-toned sound recordings, the temporary use of a weapon which he employed for trial on a nearby tree, and metal alloy samples.

Meier claimed the visitors charged him with certain informational and consciousness-raising tasks.As he undertook this mission, he met with a great deal of scorn and derision in addition to (according to his center) twenty-one assassination attempts. Some of these were allegedly initiated by hostile extraterrestrial entities and subsequently defeated largely through the intervention of his Plejaren friends. Meier was uncomfortable with the megalomaniacal associations some would attach to his role as a representative (such as use of the term "prophet", e.g.) but he undertook the effort nonetheless.

In 1975 Meier established the Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien ("Free Community of Interests for the Fringe and Spiritual Sciences and UFOlogical Studies") , or FIGU, a non-profit organization for the benefit of researchers into this field, and headquartered it at the Semjase Silver Star Center.
Topics:
Meier claims that he was instructed to transcribe his conversations with the various extraterrestrials, some of which have been published in the German language. These books are referred to as the Contact Notes (or Contact Reports). Currently, there are ten published volumes of the Contact Reports (titled Plejadisch-Plejarische Kontaktberichte). Some of the Contact Reports were translated into English, extensively edited and expurgated, and published in the out-of-print four-volume set Message From The Pleiades by Meier case investigator Wendelle Stevens.

Meier's discussions with the Plejarens are highly detailed and wide-ranging, dealing with subjects ranging from spirituality and the afterlife to the dangers of mainstream religions, human history, science and astronomical phenomena, ecology and environmental dangers, in addition to prophecies of future historic trends and events.

An additional aspect of the Meier case is the highly controversial book the Talmud Jmmanuel. It is said to be the translation of ancient Aramaic scrolls that were discovered by Meier and a colleague in Jerusalem in 1963. The book claims to be the original teachings and life events of the man named Jmmanuel. Extensive study has been made of the book by James Deardorff.

The photographs and films:Some of the most important evidence for Meier's claims come from his large collection of controversial photographs. These include images of alleged spacecraft in the Swiss countryside, the Apollo-Soyuz 1975 docking and distant astronomical phenomena. Supporters insist that the images are exceptionally high quality and that a one-armed man could not possibly have fabricated them.

Critics such as Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallée believe them to be fakes.Some critics have provided examples of similar faked photos and have pointed out that some of his photos are taken from science fiction books, paintings and television programs.Meier claims that these photos were altered by intelligence agencies and slipped into his collection in order to discredit his UFO testimony.Other allegations include focus and light-direction problems consistent with cut-and-paste and model techniques.

Some of the most convincing recreations of Meier's images were created by photographic effects specialist and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, for the June, 2005 issue of Fortean Times magazine. Friswell had employed techniques used in the pre-digital age of film special effects, as modern processes would, in Friswell's opinion, have been "unsporting". Using 'old fashioned' tricks, such as foreground miniatures and photographic cutouts, Friswell crafted believable copies of Meier's UFOs, but claimed that his pictures did not in any way confirm that Meier was a hoaxer, as without personal experience of the events, he had no right to draw conclusive opinions one way or the other.

In 1997, Mr. Meier's former wife, Kalliope also stated that the UFO photos were hoaxes made from models that Meier had made himself with items like trash can lids, carpet tacks and other household objects, and that the stories he told of his adventures with the aliens had been entirely fictitious. She acknowledged that the infamous "wedding-cake" ufo was made from the lid to a trash barrel. She has also claimed that one of the pictures taken of an "extraterrestrial female" was actually an acquaintaince covered in tanning foil.

The metal samples:

Marcel Vogel, the chemist who created the magnetic coating for computer hard disks, and researched the energetic properties of quartz crystals for IBM, examined samples of the metal provided by Meier with a scanning electron microscope. In 1979, Meier sent Vogel crystal and metal samples Meier claimed to have received from the Plejarens. Vogel reported, "When I touched the oxide with a stainless steel probe, red streaks appeared and the oxide coating disappeared. I just touched the metal ... and it started to deoxidize and become a pure metal. I have never seen a phenomenon like that before." Of another metal sample containing nearly every element in the periodic table, Vogel stated, "Each pure element was bonded to each of the others, yet somehow retained its own identity." However, a scanning electron microscope cannot determine the atomic or molecular structure of a substance, calling into question his findings. He claimed, "Thulium exists only in minute amounts. It is exceedingly expensive, far beyond platinum, and rare to come by. Someone would have to have an extensive metallurgical knowledge even to be aware of a composition of this type", said Vogel. Vogel was not a metallurgist. At 1600 X Vogel said, "A whole new world appears in the specimen. There are structures within structures - very unusual." At 2500 X he found that the sample was, "metal, but at the same time ... it is crystal!"

Vogel put the full weight of his expertise in these summary comments: "With any technology that I know of, we could not achieve this on this planet! I could not put it together myself, as a scientist... And I think it is important that those of us who are in the scientific world sit down and do some serious study on these things instead of putting it off as people's imagination."

Meier's Meeting with Jmmanuel:
As recounted in the unabridged version of Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 2, Meier was taken back in time by the extraterrestrial Asket where he met personally with Jmmanuel, alleged to be the real Jesus, and who told Meier that Meier's evolution was higher than that of Jmmanuel himself, saying, "Truly, your evolution has proceeded for 2000 years further, which fact I have not considered." (page 512). The contact with Jmmanuel lasted for four days after which Meier was returned to the present time.
World War Three:

Billy Meier has repeatedly warned of an impending Third World War beginning in November 2006, 2008, 2010, or 2011. He has also denounced the terroristic activities and vigilante behaviours of various Muslim extremist groups, which he says only foment the possibility for war. At one time, Meier suggested November, 2006 as the most likely start of World War III, then revised the date to November, 2008, a period that has also now passed. In any case, Meier states that, in an approaching year, four world leaders will die within seven days of one another, giving a clear sign that within a mere 2 years of these events the long-feared world war will indeed erupt—that is unless terrestrials finally gain mastery over their reason and change their behavior, insisting that these prophecies are all subject to change, as opposed to inevitabilities.

December 1980-Rendlesham Forest incident

2011-02-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

The Rendlesham Forest Incident is the name given to a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights and the alleged landing of a craft or multiple craft of unknown origin in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, in late December 1980, just outside of RAF Woodbridge, used at the time by the U.S. Air Force. Dozens of USAF personnel were eyewitnesses to various events over a two- or three-day period. Some ufologists believe it is perhaps the most famous UFO event to have happened in Britain, ranking amongst the best-known UFO events worldwide. Along with the Berwyn Mountain UFO incident, it has been compared to the Roswell UFO incident in the United States, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's Roswell".

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) denied that the event posed any threat to national security, and stated that it was therefore never investigated as a security matter. One notable to take sharp issue with this statement was Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, who stated an incident like this at a nuclear weapons base was necessarily of national security interest. Eyewitness and Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt (see below) has also disagreed and insists the event was covered up by both the U.K. and U.S. intelligence services. Later evidence indicated that there was a substantial MoD file on the subject, which led to claims of a cover-up; some interpreted this as part of a larger pattern of information suppression concerning the true nature of unidentified flying objects, by both the United States and British governments (see the UFO conspiracy theory). When the file was released in 2001 it turned out to consist mostly of internal correspondence and responses to inquiries from the public. The lack of any in-depth investigation in the publicly released documents is consistent with the MoD's earlier statement that they never took the case seriously.Included in the released files is an explanation given by defence minister Lord Trefgarne as to why the MoD did not investigate further.

Location:
Map of local areaRendlesham Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission and consists of about 5.8 square miles (15 km2) of coniferous plantations, interspersed with broadleaved belts, heathland and wetland areas. It is located in the county of Suffolk, about 8 miles (13 km) east of the town of Ipswich.

The incident occurred in the vicinity of two former military bases - RAF Bentwaters, which is just to the north of the forest, and RAF Woodbridge which extends into the forest from the west and is bounded by the forest on its northern and eastern edges. At the time, both were being used by the United States Air Force and were under the command of wing commander Colonel Gordon E. Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad, and his deputy was Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt. Halt's memo to the Ministry of Defence on the incident, and his personal involvement in the second night of the sightings, has given the case credibility.

The main events of the incident, including the supposed landing or landings, took place in the forest, which starts at the east end of the base runway or about 0.3 miles (.5 km) to the east of the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge, where guards first noticed mysterious lights appearing to descend into the forest. The forest extends east about 1.0 mile (1.6 km) beyond East Gate, ending at a farmer's field, where additional events allegedly took place.

Orford Ness lighthouse, which sceptics identify as the flashing light seen off to the coast by the airmen, is along the same line of sight but 5 miles (8.0 km) further east of the forest edge.

All these locations are shown on the adjacent map. Commentators have published more detailed maps of the location and a modern aerial view of the region can be found on Google Maps.
Date:Retired Sgt. John Burroughs (LE) states that the events took place over three successive nights (pm into am); 24–25, 25–26 and 26–27 December 1980. One of the key pieces of primary evidence—the "Halt memo", described below—suggests that the first sightings were on the 26th, rather than 25th. The memo was written almost two weeks after the event and its author later agreed that he had probably made a mistake in his recollection of the dates. This discrepancy in dates has not only confused subsequent researchers but also led to confusion at the time, for example in the MoD's investigation and analysis of contemporaneous radar records.

Main events :
26 December:Around 3 a.m. on 26 December 1980 strange lights were reported by a security patrol near the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge apparently descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraft but, upon entering the forest to investigate, they saw strange lights moving through the trees, as well as a bright light from an unidentified object. One of the servicemen, Sgt. Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a "craft of unknown origin" and to have made detailed notes of its features, touched its "warm" surface, and copied the numerous symbols on its body. The object allegedly flew away after their brief encounter. Penniston also claimed to have seen triangular landing gear on the object, leaving three impressions in the ground that were visible the next day. While undergoing regression hypnosis in 1984 Penniston subsequently claimed that the "craft" he encountered had come from our future, and was occupied by time travellers, not extraterrestrials. An alleged copy of Sgt. Penniston's report of the incident contains no mention of physically encountering an unknown craft, nor of interacting with it. This report and associated sketches are neither signed nor dated, nor are they representative of AF Form 1169, Statement of Witness.

Shortly after 4 a.m. local police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were those from the Orford Ness lighthouse, some miles away on the coast.Some reports claim that local farmyard animals had been behaving in a state of fear and panic.

After daybreak on the morning of 26 December, servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and found three small impressions in a triangular pattern, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. Plaster casts of the imprints were taken and have been shown in television documentaries. At 10.30 a.m. the local police were called out again, this time to see the impressions on the ground, which they thought could have been made by an animal
28 December:The servicemen returned to the site again in the early hours of 28 December 1980 with radiation detectors, although the significance of the readings they obtained is disputed.The deputy base commander Lt Col Charles I. Halt investigated this sighting personally and recorded the events on a micro-cassette recorder (see "The Halt Tape", below). The site investigated by Halt was near the eastern edge of the forest, at approximately 52° 05’ 20” N, 1° 26’ 57” E.
It was during this investigation that a flashing light was seen across the field to the east, almost in line with a farmhouse. The Orford Ness lighthouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight.
Later, starlike lights were seen in the sky to the north and south, the brightest of which seemed to beam down a stream of light from time to time.
here are claims that the incident was videoed by the USAF; but, if so, the resulting tape has not been made public.

Primary and secondary sources:
The first public report of the incident was published in the tabloid newspaper News of the World, on 2 October 1983, beneath the sensational headline UFO lands in Suffolk – and that's official. The story was based on an account by a former US airman, using the pseudonym Art Wallace (supposedly to protect himself against retribution from the USAF), although his real name was Larry Warren.
The first piece of primary evidence to be made available to the public was a memorandum written by the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Known as the "Halt memo", this was made available publicly in the United States under the US Freedom of Information Act in 1983. The memorandum (left), was dated "13 Jan 81" and headed "Unexplained Lights". The two-week delay between the incident and the report might account for errors in dates and times given. The memo was not classified in any way.Dr David Clarke has investigated the background to this memo and the reaction to it at the Ministry of Defence.His interviews with the personnel involved confirmed the cursory nature of the investigation made by the MoD, and failed to find any evidence for any other reports on the incident made by the USAF or UK apart from the Halt memo.

Statements from eyewitnesses on 26 DecemberThe Scottish researcher James Easton succeeded in obtaining the original witness statements made for Col. Halt by Fred A. Buran, 81st Security Police Squadron, Airman First Class John Burroughs, 81st LE, Airman Edward N. Cabansag, 81st Security Police Squadron, Master-Sergeant J. D. Chandler, 81st Security Police Squadron and Staff-Sergeant Jim Penniston, 81st Security Police Squadron. These documents are now in the public domain and scans of them are available on Ian Ridpath's website.

These documents describe the sightings of strange lights. Penniston, for instance, states that "directly to the east [of East Gate] about 11⁄2 miles [2.4km] in a large wooded area...a large yellow glowing light was emitting above the trees. In the center of the lighted area directly in the center ground level, there was a red light blinking on and off 5 to 10 sec intervals. And a blue light that was being for the most part steady." Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag drove into the forest in search of the source of the lights.

They heard strange noises, too. Burroughs reported a noise "like a woman was screaming" and also that "you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises". Halt heard the same noises two nights later. In a CNN interview in January 2008 he said: "The livestock around the barn seemed to be going crazy". Such noise could also have been made by Muntjac deer in the forest, which are known for their loud, shrill bark when alarmed.Cabansag said: "We figured the lights were coming from past the forest since nothing was visible when we passed through the woody forest. We would see a glowing near the beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a lit-up farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance.” Burroughs' statement also states that "We could see a beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about two miles [3 km] before we could it was coming from a light house."

Penniston's statement is the only one that positively identifies a mechanical object as the source of the lights. He states that he was within 160 feet (50 m) of the object and "it was defidently mechaniclal [sic] in nature". Penniston has subsequently claimed that, contrary to his statement at the time, he actually encountered a landed craft in the forest which he circled, touched and made notes of for 45 minutes, although there is no corroborating evidence of this from other witnesses. Penniston has shown on television a notebook in which he claims to have made real-time notes and sketches of the object. The notebook is headed with the date 27 December and the time 12:20 (00:20 GMT), which does not accord with the date and time given by the other witnesses for the incident.Penniston claims that he saw the object at a different landing site from the one investigated by Halt, much closer to RAF Woodbridge. This is inconsistent with his initial assessment that the light lay a mile and a half from East Gate.

The witnesses were unnerved by their experience and believed that they had witnessed something, as Buran expresses it, "out of the realm of explanation".

The Halt Tape:Also, in 1984, a copy of what became known as the "Halt Tape" fell into the hands of researchers. Unfortunately, because of static and the fact that the tape had been dubbed on an old machine, much of its background conversations could not be discerned. The US Sci Fi Channel acquired the original recording, which documents Halt and his patrol investigating a UFO sighting in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. This tape not only reveals much more of the background conversations but features names that could not be heard on the poor-quality 1984 dub. The tape has also been transcribed by researcher Ian Ridpath, who includes a link to an audio download.

The Halt Affidavit:In June 2010, retired Colonel Charles Halt signed a notarized affidavit, in which he again summarized what had happened, then stated he believed the event to be extraterrestrial and it had been covered up by both the US and UK:

"I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted—both then and now—to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham Forest and RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."
Halt also dismissed claims that he and his men had confused a UFO with a lighthouse beam:

"While in Rendlesham Forest, our security team observed a light that looked like a large eye, red in color, moving through the trees. After a few minutes this object began dripping something that looked like molten metal. A short while later it broke into several smaller, white-colored objects which flew away in all directions. Claims by skeptics that this was merely a sweeping beam from a distant lighthouse are unfounded; we could see the unknown light and the lighthouse simultaneously. The latter was 35 to 40-degrees off where all of this was happening."
Contradictions between this affidavit and the facts as recorded at the time in Halt's memo and tape recording have been pointed out.

In an interview, Halt's superior officer, Col Ted Conrad, criticized Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying "he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” Conrad also acknowledged the events remained unexplained.

Suffolk Police log:Suffolk Constabulary have a record, dated 26 December 1980, of a report from the law Enforcement Desk of RAF Woodbridge, stating that "We have a sighting of some unusual lights in the sky, we have sent some unarmed troops to investigate, we are terming it as a U.F.O. at present". The police investigated this report and the result is recorded as follows: "Air Traffic Control West Drayton checked. No knowledge of aircraft. Reports received of aerial phenomena over southern England during the night. Only lights visible this area was from Orford light house. Search made of area – negative." Skeptic Ian Ridpath has speculated the reported "aerial phenomena" refers to the re-entry of the Soviet Cosmos 749 satellite's final stage rocket, which was widely seen over southern England shortly after 9 p.m. on the evening of 25 December. A letter in the police file notes that one of the PCs returned to the site in daylight in case he had missed something. "There was nothing to be seen and he remains unconvinced that the occurrence was genuine. The immediate area was swept by powerful light beams from a landing beacon at RAF Bentwaters and the Orfordness lighthouse. I know from personal experience that at night, in certain weather and cloud conditions, these beams were very pronounced and certainly caused strange visual effects." A scan of the report is available at Suffolk Constabulary's website.

Other military installation involvement:Some researchers have claimed that personnel from Porton Down visited Rendlesham in 1980 after the Rendlesham Forest Incident.No evidence has been presented and there seems to be confusion with other alleged UFO incidents.

As a member of the House of Lords, Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, the former UK Chief of the Defence Staff, asked Her Majesty's Government: "Whether they are aware of any involvement by Special Branch in the investigation of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident". Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean gave the reply that "Special Branch officers may have been aware of the incident but would not have shown any interest unless there was evidence of a potential threat to national security. No such interest appears to have been shown."Hill-Norton commented, "Either large numbers of people were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base this is extremely dangerous, or what they say happened did happen, and in either of those circumstances there can only be one answer, and that is that it was of extreme defence interest."

In 2001 the British Government released its file on the incident to researchers following a request from Dr David Clarke under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Documents, a precursor to the Freedom of Information Act.The Ministry of Defence has since made these documents available online.The United States continues to remain silent despite the SciFi Channel-sponsored investigation entitled "UFO Invasion at Rendlesham", the History Channel's "UFO Files – Britain's Roswell" and Coalition for Freedom of Information inquiries.

Scepticism: The Orford Ness lighthouseJim Penniston and John Burroughs went to investigate the craft together. In an interview with Larry King on 9 November 2007, Jim Penniston claimed that he did a 45 minutes full investigation of the craft on the ground, touched the craft and took photos of the craft.John Burroughs apparently contradicts this in a separate interview in Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries. He states that after suddenly encountering the craft on the ground, "we all hit the ground, and it went up into the trees". The interviews with Jim Penniston and John Burroughs have subsequently been made available on Youtube.
Science writer Ian Ridpath investigated the incident in 1983, initially for BBC TV's Breakfast Time news programme,and on 5 January 1985 wrote an article for The Guardian which did much to discredit the accounts of the UFO sightings at Rendlesham.Ridpath asked local forester Vince Thurkettle about the flashing light, and he indicated that it originated from a nearby lighthouse, which as seen from the forest edge appears to hover slightly above the ground and would appear to move as the witnesses moved. Also, if a UFO was present, the airmen should have reported a second source of light (the lighthouse) in the same line of sight. In the Halt tape (mentioned above), one can hear an unidentified airman call out "There it is again ... there it is" with an interval of 5 seconds, the same frequency at which the Orford Ness lighthouse flashes.Video footage of the lighthouse as seen from Col Halt's vantage point at the edge of the forest shows it flashing at this rate.

Thurkettle saw the alleged "landing marks", as did the local police, and believed them simply to be old "rabbit diggings" covered with pine needles.USAF photographs of the marks discovered by researcher Georgina Bruni were sent to the MoD by Lord Hill-Norton in 2001 and released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007.Moreover, the supposed burn marks in the trees were actually axe cuts made by foresters that indicated the trees were ready to be felled. To give further pause to accepting the alleged UFO sighting, a meteor "almost as bright as the full Moon" was spotted over southern England at exactly the time of the initial reports of a bright object "landing" in the forest, according to Dr John Mason, who collects reports of meteor sightings for the British Astronomical Association. "Nothing came down in Rendlesham Forest," concludes Ridpath.
Crucial amongst the evidence is the interpretation of the levels of radiation in the area (clearly heard on the "Halt tape"). Experts at the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) have pointed out that the equipment used for this measurement was not intended to measure background radiation and therefore the readings at the low end of the measurement scale are meaningless.
Steuart Campbell proposes an alternative explanation. He agrees with the standard explanation that the incident began with the sighting of a fireball (bolide) which was interpreted by guards at the base as an aircraft falling in flames in the nearby forest. In fact it would have been hundreds of miles away over the North Sea. Campbell argues that the object subsequently seen by Halt and his men on their nocturnal expedition was the lightvessel Shipwash and that the supposed "spacecraft" were actually bright planets, such as Venus. Campbell is critical of the USAF's abilities with their equipment.

Another theory is that the incident was a hoax. The BBC reported that a former US security policeman, Kevin Conde, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights he had modified.Conde has since withdrawn the claim that he was responsible for the incident. "It is my impression that I pulled my stunt during an exercise. We would not have had an exercise during the Christmas holiday [when the UFO sightings occurred]. That is a strong indication that my stunt is not the source of this specific incident". It remains possible that the coloured lights seen in the forest on the first night of the incident were due to a hoax by a perpetrator who has never come forward.

Other explanations for the incident have included a downed Soviet spy satellite or a nuclear incident.

Researchers and commentators:Some of the first people to examine the event in detail were the British Ufologist Jenny Randles in her book "Sky Crash", and Nick Redfern in his books "Cosmic Crashes" and "A Covert Agenda".

Georgina Bruni has researched the subject and in her book You Can't Tell the People publishes a photograph of the supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting.The late Lord Hill-Norton, (Admiral of the Fleet and former Chief of the Defence Staff of the UK) also believed that a UFO landed at Rendlesham and repeatedly questioned the UK Government on the issue.

Larry Warren who was the source of the original News of the World article has written extensively on the subject and is a firm believer in an extraterrestrial explanation. Warren was certainly a USAF airman at the Woodbridge base, but his own claims that he was a witness to the incident are disputed by others, notably by Col. Halt.

Bruni and Warren do not agree on the details and have clashed publicly over the supposed inaccuracies of their respective accounts.

Prominent amongst the sceptics is Ian Ridpath (mentioned above). Much of his research is available on his website,which also includes much of the raw evidence, including the original eyewitness statements.

Jenny Randles, who originally brought the case to prominence, wrote an extensive article in her book with David Clarke and Andy Roberts, (The UFOs That Never Were) entitled "Rendle Shame Forest" where she came to the conclusion that "While some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances."

One of the most prominent believers in the extraterrestrial origin of the Rendlesham UFOs is Nick Pope who worked for the MoD, researching and investigating UFO phenomena between 1991 and 1994. He discussed the Rendlesham Forest Incident in his various books and in his articles: "Selected Documents",which relates to the MoD documents on the Rendlesham Forest incident, "Rendlesham – The Unresolved Mystery","The Rendlesham Files Reviewed"(a detailed commentary and analysis of the MoD documents) and "Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident".He has gone on record as saying that "the Rendlesham Forest Incident is bigger than Roswell" (quoted on Sci Fi Channel – see TV documentaries below).

Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Charles I Halt, the former Deputy Base Commander of USAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge, who was a major witness to these events, is also a firm believer and contributor to books and documentaries. As stated in his recent affidavit above, Halt believes he witnessed an extraterrestrial event that was then covered up. Halt was also a speaker at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on 27 September 2010, one of half a dozen former Air Force officers testifying on the subject of "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects."

Rendlesham Forest today :Forest clearing in the UFO Trail at Rendlesham ForestToday, the forest looks quite different: the Great Storm of 1987 (winds equivalent to a category 3 hurricane) caused extensive destruction of trees, and the Forestry Commission undertook a massive replanting programme in its aftermath. Some of the locations associated with the supposed incident are still identifiable and the Forestry Commission have marked a trail (the UFO Trail) for walkers, which includes the principal locations such as the small clearing where the object allegedly landed.

At the start of the UFO trail, there is a large triangular shaped metal information board. It features a map of the forest, clearly marking the UFO trail and gives a basic account of what happened in 1980, although with an erroneous date for the initial sighting:

"In December 1980 several sightings of UFOs were reported in Rendlesham Forest. Many think these mysterious events are the most significant UFO incident to have occurred in the UK.

"During the evening of 26 December a resident of Sudbourne, a village approximately 6 miles (10 km) to the North East of Rendlesham Forest, reported a mysterious shape (like an upturned mushroom) in the sky above his garden. Later that night two USAF patrolmen at the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge spotted unusual lights in the forest, and were given permission to investigate. What they reported was very strange.

"This was the time of the 'Cold War' and because of the sensitive military situation at the time, the incident was officially reported to the Military Authorities by the Deputy Base Commander Lt. Colonel Charles Halt, USAF.

"There is, of course, no tangible evidence of a UFO on the ground – no debris was found apart from some broken tree top branches. We can, however, piece together, from transcripts and recordings which were taken at the time, an intriguing picture."

Official government sourcesMoD Documents covering the UFO incident at Rendlesham Forest in 1980 were first released in May 2001 to Dr. David Clarke of Sheffield University who had requested them under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information (which preceded the UK's Freedom of Information Act). Dr Clarke discusses them on his website In 2008 the files were transferred from MoD to The National Archives (TNA) and removed from the MoD website.
As of August 2009, all documents relating to the incident are available on the National Archives UFO section under reference DEFE 24/1948. These documents include the request above, along with details of the Ombudsman judgment which followed. For the next few months, access to this file, and other files released on the same date will be free to view and download. As of January 2011, these documents are available for a fee of €3.50.
The Halt Memo
TV documentariesLifetime Television's Unsolved Mysteries: "Bentwaters UFO" – First broadcast in the US on 18 September 1991.
London Weekend Television's Strange But True? – First broadcast in the UK on 1994 December 9.
BBC3's Britain's Closest Encounter – First broadcast in the UK on 2003 March 15.
SciFi Channel's UFO Invasion at Rendlesham – First broadcast in the US on 12 December 2003 and in the UK on 1 December 2005.
British UFO Files – First broadcast on Five (TV) in 2004.
National Geographic Channel's Naked Science: "Close Encounters" – First broadcast in the US on 17 December 2005.
History Channel's UFO Files: "Britain's Roswell" – First broadcast in the US on 17 December 2005 and in the UK 22 January 2006.
History Channel's UFO Hunters – First aired 27 February 2008.
History Channel's "I know What I Saw" First aired December 2009

Rendlesham Forest incident

13 October 1917,Miracle of the Sun -Fatima/Portugal

2011-01-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

The Miracle of the Sun (Portuguese: O Milagre do Sol) is a miraculous event witnessed by 30,000 to 100,000 people on 13 October 1917 in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal. Those in attendance had assembled to observe what the Portuguese secular newspapers had been ridiculing for months as the absurd claim of three shepherd children that a miracle was going to occur at high-noon in the Cova da Iria on 13 October 1917.

According to many witness statements, after a downfall of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It was said to be significantly duller than normal, and to cast multicolored lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth in a zigzag pattern,frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world. Witnesses reported that their previously wet clothes became "suddenly and completely dry, as well as the wet and muddy ground that had been previously soaked because of the rain that had been falling. Engineers that have studied the case reckoned that an incredible amount of energy would have been necessary to dry up those pools of water that had formed on the field in a few minutes as it was reported by witnesses."

Estimates of the number of witnesses range from 30,000 to 40,000 by Avelino de Almeida, writing for the Portuguese newspaper O Século, to 100,000, estimated by Dr. Joseph Garrett, professor of natural sciences at the University of Coimbra, both of whom were present that day.

The event was attributed by believers to Our Lady of Fátima, an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three young shepherd children in 1917, as having been predicted by the three children on 13 July, 19 August, and 13 September 1917. The children reported that the Lady had promised them that she would on 13 October reveal her identity to them and provide a miracle "so that all may believe."

According to these reports, the event lasted approximately ten minutes. The three children also reported seeing a panorama of visions, including those of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of Saint Joseph blessing the people.

Doubts from skeptics have been raised about the uniqueness and causes of the event.

DescriptionsThe most widely cited descriptions of the events reported at Fatima are taken from the writings of John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher. De Marchi spent seven years in Fátima, from 1943 to 1950, conducting original research and interviewing the principals at undisturbed length. In The Immaculate Heart, published in 1952, De Marchi reports that, "heir ranks (those present on 13 October) included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men. Hundreds, from these mixed categories, have given formal testimony. Reports do vary; impressions are in minor details confused, but none to our knowledge has directly denied the visible prodigy of the sun."

A photostatic copy of a page from Ilustração Portugueza, October 29, 1917, showing the crowd looking at the Miracle of the Sun during the Fátima apparitions.Some of the witness statements follow below. They are taken from John De Marchi's several books on the matter.

"Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people." ― Avelino de Almeida, writing for O Século (Portugal's most widely circulated and influential newspaper, which was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time Almeida's previous articles had been to satirize the previously reported events at Fátima).
"The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat." ― Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem.
"...The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds... The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands... people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they." ― Reporter for the Lisbon newspaper O Dia.
"The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible." — Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University.
"As if like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were wrenched apart, and the sun at its zenith appeared in all its splendor. It began to revolve vertiginously on its axis, like the most magnificent firewheel that could be imagined, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and sending forth multicolored flashes of light, producing the most astounding effect. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The immense multitude, overcome by the evidence of such a tremendous prodigy, threw themselves on their knees." ― Dr. Formigão, a professor at the seminary at Santarém, and a priest.
"I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment." — Rev. Joaquim Lourenço, describing his boyhood experience in Alburitel, eighteen kilometers from Fatima.
"On that day of October 13, 1917, without remembering the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky of a kind I had never seen before. I saw it from this veranda..." — Portuguese poet Afonso Lopes Vieira.

Critical evaluation of the eventJoe Nickell notes "Not surprisingly, perhaps, Sun Miracles have been reported at other Marian sites—at Lubbock, Texas, in 1989; Mother Cabrini Shrine near Denver, Colorado, in 1992; Conyers, Georgia, in the early to mid-1990s". Nickell also suggests that the dancing effects witnessed at Fatima may have been due to optical effects resulting from temporary retinal distortion caused by staring at such an intense light.

Professor Auguste Meessen of the Institute of Physics, Catholic University of Leuven, has stated sun miracles cannot be taken at face value and that the reported observations were optical effects caused by prolonged staring at the sun. Meessen contends that retinal after-images produced after brief periods of sun gazing are a likely cause of the observed dancing effects. Similarly Meessen states that the color changes witnessed were most likely caused by the bleaching of photosensitive retinal cells. Meessen observes that Sun Miracles have been witnessed in many places where religiously charged pilgrims have been encouraged to stare at the sun. He cites the apparitions at Heroldsbach, Germany (1949) as an example, where similar observations as at Fatima were witnessed by more than 10,000 people.Meessen also cites a British Journal of Ophthalmology article that discusses some modern examples of Sun Miracles. While Meessen suggests possible psychological or neurological explanations for the apparitions he notes, "It is impossible to provide any direct evidence for or against the supernatural origin of apparitions". He also notes that "[t]here may be some exceptions, but in general, the seers are honestly experiencing what they report."

De Marchi claims that the prediction of an unspecified "miracle", the abrupt beginning and end of the alleged miracle of the sun, the varied religious backgrounds of the observers, the sheer numbers of people present, and the lack of any known scientific causative factor make a mass hallucination unlikely. That the activity of the sun was reported as visible by those up to 18 kilometres (11 mi) away, also precludes the theory of a collective hallucination or mass hysteria.

Despite these assertions, not all witnesses reported seeing the sun "dance". Some people only saw the radiant colors. Others, including some believers, saw nothing at all. No scientific accounts exist of any unusual solar or astronomic activity during the time the sun was reported to have "danced", and there are no witness reports of any unusual solar phenomenon further than 64 kilometres (40 mi) out from Cova da Iria.

Pio Scatizzi, S.J. describes events of Fátima and concludes:

The ... solar phenomena were not observed in any observatory. Impossible that they should escape notice of so many astronomers and indeed the other inhabitants of the hemisphere... there is no question of an astronomical or meteorological event phenomenon... Either all the observers in Fátima were collectively deceived and erred in their testimony, or we must suppose an extra-natural intervention.

Steuart Campbell, writing for the 1989 edition of Journal of Meteorology, postulated that a cloud of stratospheric dust changed the appearance of the sun on 13 October, making it easy to look at, and causing it to appear yellow, blue, and violet and to spin. In support of his hypothesis, Mr. Campbell reports that a blue and reddened sun was reported in China as documented in 1983.

A parhelion in rainbow colors, photographed in 2005.Joe Nickell, a skeptic and investigator of paranormal phenomena (who is not a scientist), claims that the position of the phenomenon, as described by the various witnesses, is at the wrong azimuth and elevation to have been the sun. He suggests the cause may have been a sundog. Sometimes referred to as a parhelion or "mock sun", a sundog is a relatively common atmospheric optical phenomenon associated with the reflection/refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. A sundog is, however, a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the "dancing sun".

Paul Simons, in an article entitled "Weather Secrets of Miracle at Fátima", states that he believes it possible that some of the optical effects at Fatima may have been caused by a cloud of dust from the Sahara.

Kevin McClure claims that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the sun, as similar phenomena had been reported in the weeks leading up to the miracle. On this basis he believes that the crowd saw what it wanted to see. But it has been objected that McClure's account fails to explain similar reports of people miles away, who by their own testimony were not even thinking of the event at the time, or the sudden drying of people's sodden, rain-soaked clothes. Kevin McClure stated that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any of the research he had done in the previous ten years, although he has not explicitly stated what these contradictions were.

Leo Madigan believes that the various witness reports of a miracle are accurate; however he alleges inconsistency of witnesses, and suggests that astonishment, fear, exaltation and imagination must have played roles in both the observing and the retelling. Madigan likens the experiences to prayer, and considers that the spiritual nature of the phenomenon explains what he describes as the inconsistency of the witnesses.

John Haffert, founder of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, explains the event as a vision of the Great Chastisement. The 200 witnesses he interviewed while researching his book Meet The Witnesses reported similar descriptions of the sun careening towards the earth and a sense of the end of the world. He compares this description to a recognized vision of Our Lady of Akita on October 13, 1973 to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa in Akita, Japan, in which she recorded:

As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful.

Author Lisa Schwebel claims that the event was a supernatural extra-sensory phenomenon. Schwebel notes that the solar phenomenon reported at Fátima is not unique: there have been several reported cases of high pitched religious gatherings culminating in the sudden and mysterious appearance of lights in the sky.

Stanley L. Jaki, a professor of physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, Benedictine priest and author of a number of books dealing with the intersection of science and faith, proposed a unique theory about the supposed miracle.Jaki believes that the event was natural and meteorological in nature, but that the fact the event occurred at the exact time predicted was a miracle.

The event was officially accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church on 13 October 1930. On 13 October 1951, papal legate Cardinal Tedeschini told the million gathered at Fátima that on 30 October, 31 October, 1 November, and 8 November 1950, Pope Pius XII himself witnessed the miracle of the sun from the Vatican gardens.

In addition to the Miracle of the Sun, the seers at Fatima indicated that the lady prophesied a great sign in the night sky which would precede a second great war. On January 25, 1938, bright lights, an aurora borealis, appeared all over the northern hemisphere, including in places as far south as north Africa, Bermuda and California. It was the widest occurrence of the aurora since 1709 and people in Paris and elsewhere believed a great fire was burning and fire departments were called.Lucia, the sole surviving seer at the time, indicated that it was the sign fortold and so apprised her superior and the bishop in letters the following day.Just over a month later, Hitler seized Austria and eight months later invaded Czechoslovakia.

June 30 1908,Tunguska Event-Siberia/Russia

2011-01-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

The Tunguska event, or Tunguska explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. KRAT (0:14 UT) on June 30 1908

The explosion is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.

The number of scholarly publications on the problem of the Tunguska explosion since 1908 may be estimated at about 1,000 (mainly in Russian). Many scientists have participated in Tunguska studies, the best-known of them being Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill Florensky, Nikolay Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.

Although the meteoroid or comet burst in the air rather than hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT (21–130 PJ), with 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 PJ) the most likely—roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954, about 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

The Tunguska event is the largest impact event over land in Earth's recent history.Impacts of similar size over remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s.

At around 7:17 a.m. local time, Tungus natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About 10 minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported the sound source moving east to north. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres away. The majority of witnesses reported only the sounds and the tremors, and not the sighting of the explosion. Eyewitness accounts differ as to the sequence of events and their overall duration.

The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia. In some places the shock wave would have been equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale. It also produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. Over the next few days, night skies in Asia and Europe were aglow; it has been theorized that this was due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles formed at extremely cold temperatures, a phenomenon that occurs when the Space Shuttle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months, from suspended dust.

Selected eyewitness reports

Testimony of S. Semenov, as recorded by Leonid Kulik's expedition in 1930.

At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post (65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion), facing north. [...] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest (as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up — expedition note). The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.

Testimony of Chuchan of Shanyagir tribe, as recorded by I.M. Suslov in 1926.

We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, 'Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?' We were both in the hut, couldn't see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one!

Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck against the fallen trees.
We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled 'Look up' and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder.
Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.

Sibir newspaper, July 2, 1908
On the 17th of June, around 9am in the morning, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the north Karelinski village(about four miles) north of Kirensk, and heard to the north east some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north east window glass shook.

Siberian Life newspaper, July 27, 1908
"When the meteorite fell, strong tremors in the ground were observed, and near the Lovat village of the two strong explosions were heard, as if from large-caliber artillery."

Kezhemskoe village. On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterwards a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake which literally shook the buildings, as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps were accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterwards for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5 - 2 minutes after one of the "barrages" six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors.

The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. However upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon which kept getting smaller and more transparent and possibly by around 2-3 p.m. completely disappeared.
There was little scientific curiosity about the impact at the time, possibly due to the isolation of the Tunguska region. If there were any early expeditions to the site, the records were likely to have been lost during the subsequent chaotic years — World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War.

The first recorded expedition arrived at the scene more than a decade after the event. In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, visiting the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin as part of a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, deduced from local accounts that the explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. He persuaded the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the Tunguska region, based on the prospect of meteoric iron that could be salvaged to aid Soviet industry. Kulik's party eventually undertook an expedition in 1927.

Photograph from Kulik's 1927 expeditionUpon arrival, Kulik made arrangements with the local Evenki hunters to guide his party to the impact site. Reaching the explosion site was an extremely arduous task. Upon reaching an area just south of the site, the superstitious Evenki hunters would go no further, fearing what they called the Valleymen. Kulik had to return to the nearby village, and his party was delayed for several days while they sought new guides.

The spectacle that confronted Kulik as he stood on a ridge overlooking the devastated area was overwhelming. To the explorers' surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead around ground zero a vast zone (8 kilometers across) of trees scorched and devoid of branches, but standing upright. Those farther away had been partly scorched and knocked down in a direction away from the centre. Much later, in the 1960s, it was established that the zone of leveled forest occupied an area of some 2150 square kilometers, its shape resembling a gigantic spread-eagled butterfly with a “wingspan” of 70 kilometers and a “body length” of 55 kilometers. Upon closer examination, Kulik located holes which he erroneously concluded were meteorite holes; however, he did not have the means at this time to excavate the holes.

During the next ten years there were three more expeditions to the area. Kulik found several dozens of little “pothole” bogs, each some 10 to 50 meters in diameter, that he thought might be meteoric craters. After a laborious exercise in draining one of these bogs (the so-called “Suslov’s crater”, 32 meters in diameter), he found there was an old stump on the bottom, ruling out the possibility that it was a meteoric crater. In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial photographic survey of the area covering the central part of the leveled forest (some 250 square kilometers).The negatives of these aerial photographs (1500 negatives, each 18 x 18 cm) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, then Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was done under the pretext that they were a fire hazard, but the truth may have been the active dislike by official meteorite specialists of anything associated with an unyielding enigma. However, positive imprints could be preserved for further studies in the Russian city of Tomsk.

Despite the large amount of devastation, there was no crater to be seen.

Expeditions sent to the area in the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite spheres in siftings of the soil. Similar spheres were predicted to exist in the felled trees, although they could not be detected by contemporary means. Later expeditions did identify such spheres in the resin of the trees. Chemical analysis showed that the spheres contained high proportions of nickel relative to iron, which is also found in meteorites, leading to the conclusion they were of extraterrestrial origin. The concentration of the spheres in different regions of the soil was also found to be consistent with the expected distribution of debris from a meteorite airburst. Later studies of the spheres found unusual ratios of numerous other metals relative to the surrounding environment, which was taken as further evidence of their extraterrestrial origin.

Chemical analysis of peat bogs from the area also revealed numerous anomalies considered consistent with an impact event. The isotopic signatures of stable carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen isotopes at the layer of the bogs corresponding to 1908 were found to be inconsistent with the isotopic ratios measured in the adjacent layers, and this abnormality was not found in bogs located outside the area. The region of the bogs showing these anomalous signatures also contains an unusually high proportion of iridium, similar to the iridium layer found in the K–T boundary. These unusual proportions are believed to result from debris from the impacting body that deposited in the bogs. The nitrogen is believed to have been deposited as acid rain, a suspected fallout from the explosion.
Meteoroid airburstThe leading scientific explanation for the explosion is the airburst of a meteoroid 6–10 kilometres (4–6 miles) above Earth's surface.

Meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere from outer space every day, usually travelling at a speed of more than 10 kilometres per second (6 miles/sec or 21,600 mph). The heat generated by compression of air in front of the body (ram pressure) as it travels through the atmosphere is immense and most meteoroids burn up or explode before they reach the ground. Since the second half of the 20th century, close monitoring of Earth's atmosphere has led to the discovery that such meteoroid airbursts occur rather frequently. A stony meteoroid of about 10 metres (30 ft) in diameter can produce an explosion of around 20 kilotons, similar to that of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and data released by the U.S. Air Force's Defense Support Program indicate that such explosions occur high in the upper atmosphere more than once a year. Tunguska-like megaton-range events are much rarer. Eugene Shoemaker estimated that such events occur about once every 300 years.
Blast patternsThe explosion's effect on the trees near ground zero was replicated during atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. These effects are caused by the shock wave produced by large explosions. The trees directly below the explosion are stripped as the blast wave moves vertically downward, while trees further away are knocked over because the blast wave is travelling closer to the horizontal when it reaches them.

Soviet experiments performed in the mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches on wire stakes) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast patterns strikingly similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in mid-air.
Asteroid or comet?The composition of the Tunguska body remains a matter of controversy. In 1930, the British astronomer F.J.W. Whipple suggested that the Tunguska body was a small comet. A cometary meteorite, being composed primarily of ice and dust, could have been completely vaporized by the impact with the Earth's atmosphere, leaving no obvious traces. The comet hypothesis was further supported by the glowing skies (or "skyglows" or "bright nights") observed across Europe for several evenings after the impact, possibly explained by dust and ice that had been dispersed from the comet's tail across the upper atmosphere. The cometary hypothesis gained a general acceptance amongst Soviet Tunguska investigators by the 1960s.

In 1978, astronomer Ľubor Kresák suggested that the body was a fragment of the short-period Comet Encke, which is responsible for the Beta Taurid meteor shower: the Tunguska event coincided with a peak in that shower, and the approximate trajectory of the Tunguska impactor is consistent with what would be expected from such a fragment. It is now known that bodies of this kind explode at frequent intervals tens to hundreds of kilometres above the ground. Military satellites have been observing these explosions for decades.

In 1983, astronomer Zdeněk Sekanina published a paper criticizing the comet hypothesis. He pointed out that a body composed of cometary material, travelling through the atmosphere along such a shallow trajectory, ought to have disintegrated, whereas the Tunguska body apparently remained intact into the lower atmosphere. Sekanina argued that the evidence pointed to a dense, rocky object, probably of asteroidal origin. This hypothesis was further boosted in 2001, when Farinella, Foschini, et al. released a study suggesting that the object had arrived from the direction of the asteroid belt.

Proponents of the comet hypothesis have suggested that the object was an extinct comet with a stony mantle that allowed it to penetrate the atmosphere.

The chief difficulty in the asteroid hypothesis is that a stony object should have produced a large crater where it struck the ground, but no such crater has been found. It has been hypothesized that the passage of the asteroid through the atmosphere caused pressures and temperatures to build up to a point where the asteroid abruptly disintegrated in a huge explosion. The destruction would have to have been so complete that no remnants of substantial size survived, and the material scattered into the upper atmosphere during the explosion would have caused the skyglows. Models published in 1993 suggested that the stony body would have been about 60 metres across, with physical properties somewhere between an ordinary chondrite and a carbonaceous chondrite.

Christopher Chyba and others have proposed a process whereby a stony meteorite could have exhibited the behavior of the Tunguska impactor. Their models show that when the forces opposing a body's descent become greater than the cohesive force holding it together, it blows apart, releasing nearly all its energy at once. The result is no crater, and damage distributed over a fairly wide radius, all of the damage being blast and thermal.

Three-dimensional numerical modelling of the Tunguska impact done by Utyuzhnikov and Rudenko in 2008 supports the comet hypothesis. According to their results, the comet matter dispersed in the atmosphere, while the destruction of the forest was caused by the shock wave.

During the 1990s, Italian researchers extracted resin from the core of the trees in the area of impact to examine trapped particles that were present during the 1908 event. They found high levels of material commonly found in rocky asteroids and rarely found in comets.

In research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists contend that the impact was caused by a comet because of the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the impact, a phenomenon caused by massive amounts of water vapor in the upper atmosphere. They compared the noctilucent cloud phenomenon to the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle Endeavour.
Lake ChekoSee also: Lake Cheko
In June 2007, it was announced that scientists from the University of Bologna had identified a lake in the Tunguska region as a possible impact crater from the event. They do not dispute that the Tunguska body exploded in midair but believe that a one-meter fragment survived the explosion and impacted the ground. Lake Cheko is a small, bowl-shaped lake approximately 8 kilometres north-northwest of the hypocenter. The hypothesis has been disputed by other impact crater specialists.A 1961 investigation had dismissed a modern origin of Lake Cheko, saying that the presence of metres-thick silt deposits at the lake's bed suggests an age of at least 5,000 years; but more recent research suggests that only a meter or so of the sediment layer on the lake bed is "normal lacustrine sedimentation," a depth indicating a much younger lake of about 100 years. Acoustic-echo soundings of the lake floor provide support for the hypothesis that the lake was formed by the Tunguska event. The soundings revealed a conical shape for the lake bed, which is consistent with an impact crater. Magnetic readings indicate a possible meter-sized chunk of rock below the lake's deepest point that may be a fragment of the colliding body. Finally, the lake's long axis points to the hypocenter of the Tunguska explosion, about 7.0 km away.Work is still being done at Lake Cheko to determine its origins.

The conclusions of the Italian scientist were published on the website of the University of Bologna. The main points are that "Cheko, a small lake located in Siberia close to the epicentre of the 1908 Tunguska explosion, might fill a crater left by the impact of a fragment of a Cosmic Body. Sediment cores from the lake's bottom were studied to support or reject this hypothesis. A 175-cm-long core, collected near the center of the lake, consists of an upper cca. 1-m-thick sequence of lacustrine deposits overlaying coarser chaotic material. 210Pb and 137Cs indicate that the transition from lower to upper sequence occurred close to the time of the Tunguska Event. Pollen analysis reveals that remains of aquatic plants are abundant in the top post-1908 sequence but are absent in the lower pre-1908 portion of the core. These results, including organic C, N and δ13C data, suggest that Lake Cheko formed at the time of the Tunguska Event."
Speculative hypothesesThe behaviour of meteorites in the Earth's atmosphere was less well understood during the early decades of the 20th century. Due to this, as well as the paucity of relevant data resulting from Soviet secrecy during the Cold War, a great many other hypotheses for the Tunguska event have sprung up, none of which are accepted by the scientific community.

Comet 2005NB56One study "suggests that a chunk of Comet 2005NB56 caused the 5–10 megaton fireball, bouncing off the atmosphere and back into orbit around the sun." The scientists involved in the study claim that the object that caused the event will pass close to Earth again in 2045.

Natural H-bombIn 1989, Serge J.D. D'Alessio and Archie A. Harms suggested that some of the deuterium in a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere may have undergone a nuclear fusion reaction,leaving a distinctive signature in the form of carbon-14. They concluded that any release of nuclear energy would have been almost negligible. Independently, in 1990, César Sirvent proposed that a deuterium comet, i.e., a comet with an anomalous high concentration of deuterium in its composition, could have exploded as a natural hydrogen bomb, generating most of the energy released. The sequence would be first a mechanical or kinetic explosion, triggering a thermonuclear reaction. These proposals are inconsistent with our knowledge of the composition of comets and of the temperature and pressure conditions necessary for initiating a nuclear fusion reaction. Studies have found the concentration of radioactive isotopes in the blast region to be inconsistent with those expected following a nuclear explosion, fusion or otherwise.

Edward Drobyshevski, generally considered a fringe scientist, has suggested that the event was caused by the explosion of the hydrogen-saturated part of the nucleus of a comet that struck the Earth's atmosphere, with most of the remaining comet nucleus surviving, and possibly continuing to orbit the sun.

Black holeIn 1973, Albert A. Jackson and Michael P. Ryan, physicists at the University of Texas, proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by a small (around 1017 kg to 1019 kg) black hole passing through the Earth. This hypothesis is flawed, as there was no so-called exit event — a second explosion occurring as the black hole, having tunnelled through the Earth, shot out the other side on its way back into space. Based on the direction of impact, the exit event would have occurred in the North Atlantic, closer than the impact event to the seismic recording stations that collected much of the evidence of the event. The hypothesis also fails to account for evidence that cosmic material was deposited by the impacting body, including dust trails in the atmosphere and the distribution of high-nickel magnetic spherules around the impact area.

AntimatterMain article: Antimatter comet#Tunguska event of 1908
In 1941, Lincoln LaPaz, and later in 1965, Clyde Cowan, Chandra R. Atluri, and Willard F. Libby suggested that the Tunguska event was caused by the annihilation of a chunk of antimatter falling from space.As with the other hypotheses described in this section, this does not account for the mineral debris left in the area of the explosion.

The Wardenclyffe TowerOliver Nichelson suggested that the Tunguska explosion may have been the result of an experiment by Nikola Tesla using the Wardenclyffe Tower, performed during one of Admiral Robert Peary's North Pole expeditions.

This theory failed to gain many adherents owing to the lack of positive evidence, the presence of meteoroid fragments in soils and trees from the time, and the fact that the Wardenclyffe Tower was largely or entirely inactive at that time.

Alien spaceship crashA number of theories based on UFOs have claimed that the Tunguska event was the result of the activities of extraterrestrial beings, including an exploding alien spaceship or even an alien weapon going off to "save the Earth from an imminent threat". These claims appear to originate from a science fiction story "The Explosion" written by the Soviet engineer Alexander Kazantsev in 1946, in which a nuclear-powered Martian spaceship, trying to land on the Earth, meets with a disaster and blows up in mid-air. Kazantsev never visited Hiroshima, but his idea of the above-ground explosion of the Tunguska space body was inspired by the news about the nuclear explosion over that Japanese city, as well as by his talks with some leading Soviet nuclear physicists.

Many events in Kazantsev's tale, which was intended as pure fantasy, were subsequently confused with the actual occurrences at Tunguska. The nuclear-powered UFO hypothesis was adopted by the TV critics Thomas Atkins and John Baxter in their book The Fire Came By (1976). The television series The Secret KGB UFO Files (Phenomenon: The Lost Archives) in 1998, broadcast on Turner Network Television, referred to the Tunguska event as "the Russian Roswell" and claimed that crashed UFO debris had been recovered from the site. In 2004, a group from the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation claimed to have found the wreckage of an alien spacecraft at the site. In 2009, Dr. Yuri Labvin, the president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation repeated these claims, based upon findings of quartz slabs with strange markings on them found at the site, which, he claims, represent the remnants of an alien spaceship's control panel.

Geophysical hypothesis:
Astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt has suggested the Tunguska event was caused by the sudden release and subsequent explosion of 10 million tons of natural gas from within the Earth's crust. The similar verneshot hypothesis has also been suggested as a possible cause of the Tunguska event.

August 12 1883,Jose Bonilla-Mexico

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Zacatecas Observatory's boss, leading astronomer Jose Bonilla and an assistant were preparing to study the Sun's corona when he saw distant objects crossing his field of view.

During the next 36 hours the two worked continuously (through daylight hours when Sun was visible) to record the transits of those "disks" across the solar face, using the Observatory's new camera equipment.

One of Bonilla's images said to be the `first UFO photographs'.

Early on, they counted 283 of the `craft' in two hours, but, due to the bulky photographic plates' awkward set-ups and removals, they must have seen less than the true total passing the face of the Sun during their vigil. In total they counted 447 disks crossing the Sun.

Bonilla said some craft showed as almost perfectly circular shadows when seen silhouetted against the Sun, that they [often] traveled side by side in pairs, and [often] in groups of up to 20, and that they moved across the Sun's face in a perfectly straight line, from West to East - ie. from right to left.

Translation of Bonilla's Report
[ an `equatorial' is a telescope mounted in a mechanism that moves equatorially to track a star, like this early Chinese `naked-eye' mechanism does ]

"The passsage over the solar disc of a swarm of bodies, seen at the Observatory of Zacatecas (Mexico)".

By: José Árbol y Bonilla (Director of the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico).

"I pursue, at Zacatecas Observatory, located two thousand 502 meters above sea level, the daily observation of the state of the solar surface; drawing, through direct and projection, sunspots and granulations, as well as the protuberances of the solar chromosphere, through the spectroscope.

To this end, I have adapted to the equatorial 0.16 m aperture, a projection device that receives on a sheet of paper a picture of Sol 0,250 m in diameter, as the field of the lens is not projected rather than on its surface 0,260 in the clear form. When the solar disc offers some interest I take photographs of 0,067 m in diameter, with plates of instantaneous gelatinobromuro silver

The dome of the observatory has small windows and thick black curtains, so that nothing penetrate the objective but the image of the Sun. This provision always allowed me to note, with precision and clarity, the details of sunspots and the granulations, thanks to the transparency of the atmosphere and the height at which the observatory is located, under a tropical sky. (22 ° 46 '34 "north latitude 9).

On August 12, 1883, at 08:00 am, I began to draw sunspots when I suddenly saw a small light entering the field of the lens, seen on the paper that I used to reproduce sunspots, and, crossing the solar-disc, it then looked like a shadow almost circular.

I had not recovered from my amazement when the same phenomenon was reproduced again, and then again, so often that in a space of two hours I could count up to 283 bodies across the solar disk.

Little by little, the clouds hampered observation, which could not be restarted until after noon, and then only for 40 minutes. During that period I counted 48 other bodies again. The paths followed by these bodies indicate a direct shift from west to east, more or less inclined to the north or south of the solar disc. During this short observation I noticed that those bodies that appeared dark-black and perfectly round and some other more or less elongated when seen against the solar disc, became bright images as they left its edges and moved across the outer field of the lens.

Their time intervals were variable, a body passing through would not take more than one third, half a second, or at most one second to cross the disc, and a minute or two passed before others appeared - some passed as 15 or 20 at once, so that was difficult to count them. I drew the trajectory of many of these bodies on the solar disc, marking their `entrances' and `exits' on the paper that I used to draw sunspots; as the lens of the equatorial moved, through a system of clockwork gears, following the apparent movement of the Sun on the celestial sphere.

The figure 118 is a small copy of the drawing I did of the solar disc that day (of 250 millimetres in diameter) with the trajectory of the bodies and sunspots.

Taking photographs of the Sun frequently, when its image shows sunspots and remarkable facula, I was already in a position to photograph this equally rare and interesting phenomenon: the passage of these bodies across the solar disc.

On this occasion I replaced in the same equatorial the objective of 0.16 m by another of equal intensity, but with a chemical focus (suitable for photographic work), which could be used optically and for the camera. After various tests to focus correctly, I managed to take some photographs, of which I have chosen I think the more interesting to send to the magazine 'L'Astronomie'.

While I took these photographs an assistant counted the bodies using the 'finder-scope' of the equatorial. The photograph was taken at Collodion process to 1 / 100 second. This speed gave me no time to properly prepare the filter and (chemical)baths but also the negative is somewhat veiled by the developer. The image of the Sun is not in focus, but that of the bodies, to which I gave at that time greatest interest.

Although in projection and to the naked eye all the bodies appeared round or spherical, it is observed in the various photographs that this is not true and that the majority have irregular shapes.

I said that, in the field of projection lens, the bodies appeared bright and left a bright trail, but across the solar disc they seemed opaque. Examining carefully the photographs and the negatives, one sees each is surrounded by a body like a dark cloudiness and a track (trail) out in the field of the lens, and, on going outside of the solar-disc, they are bright. That would make me believe that the bright trails of the bodies crossing the solar-disk absorb sunlight radiation or diminish its power, photographically.

In the afternoon the clouds prevented me from observing. Then I took certain measures and established a monitoring plan if the phenomenon were to be reproduced the next day.

On August 13, the sky was overcast until eight a.m., then the clouds cleared a bit and I was able to observe. Quickly the phenomenon was seen again, and during the 45 minutes of observation allowed us by the state of the sky, 116 bodies crossed the solar disk.

Following the observation made the previous day, I had telegraphed the observatories of Mexico [City?] and Puebla to ask them to observe the phenomena, but they were invisible to them.

In order to verify indirectly the approximate distance to the `swarm' of bodies, I had carefully prepared the `finder', the equatorial and a silver mirror lens (Eddy) 0.10 m in diameter and focussed them on the Solar-disk and then on the bodies, while at night I was able to steer this system also towards the planets and the moon, which had been in the first quarter over the past two days. Without changing the focus of the system, only the Moon was seen with sharpness.

This fact, coupled with the invisibility of the phenomenon in Mexico [City] and Puebla or elsewhere, makes me think that these bodies were close to Earth, at least at a lesser distance than the moon, and that the parallax was significant. For that reason Mexico and Puebla would not have seen them, as they would be projected outside the solar disc."

Bonilla had noted that the objects were `luminous' and left a bright `trail' (or exhaust?) and that both object and trail were seen as `dark' or opaque when actually crossing the Sun's face.

He also saw the significance of this fact - that is, the luminosity of each object changed to a dark surrounding blur when seen against the Sun, which could be caused by a field of some sort - (even intense heat has a similar but lesser effect) whereas its bright track or trail became a dark line when silhouetted and therefore must have consisted of `matter', say a jet of gas or even of ions.

A beam of light, say, would disappear when seen against the Sun: light consists of photons, which don't generally block or interfere with other photons.

N.b. - the photographic `speed' of Bonilla's plates being fairly `slow', it's no surprise that his photographs didn't show the true shapes of extemely fast-moving objects.

As an astronomer Bonilla was well qualified to mathematically work out the direction of motion and angular `speed' of the objects, and his equipment had sufficently precise focussing for him to estimate their distance - he is reported at first as saying "not more than 300,000 kms" ie. approx 3/4s of the distance to the Moon

He later said they were about 242,000 kms away - approx. two thirds of the Moon's average distance. But there is no reported statement as to their trajectory. That is, were they departing or approaching the Earth - Moon system?

April 17, 1897 Aurora, Texas UFO incident

2011-01-13T10:39:00.000-08:00

The Aurora UFO Incident is a UFO incident that reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897 in Aurora, Texas, a small town in the northwest corner of the DFW Metroplex.The incident (similar to the more famous Roswell UFO Incident 50 years later) reportedly resulted in a fatality from the crash. The alleged alien body is reportedly buried in an unmarked grave at the local cemetery.
During the 1896–1897 timeframe (some six or seven years before the Wright Brothers' first flight), numerous sightings of a cigar-shaped flying machine were reported across the United States.

One of these accounts appeared in the April 19, 1897 edition of the Dallas Morning News. Written by Aurora resident S.E. Haydon[2], the alleged UFO is said to have hit a windmill on the property of a Judge J.S. Proctor two days earlier at around 6am local (Central) time[3], resulting in its crash. The pilot (who was reported to be "not of this world", and a "Martian" according to a purported Army officer from nearby Fort Worth) did not survive the crash, and was buried "with Christian rites" at the nearby Aurora Cemetery. (The cemetery contains a Texas Historical Commission marker mentioning the incident.)

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Purportedly, wreckage from the crash site was dumped into a nearby well located under the damaged windmill, while some ended up with the alien in the grave. Adding to the mystery was the story of Mr. Brawley Oates, who purchased Judge Proctor's property around 1945. Oates cleaned out the debris from the well in order to use it as a water source, but later developed an extremely severe case of arthritis, which he claimed to be the result of contaminated water from the wreckage dumped into the well. Thus, Oates sealed up the well with a concrete slab and placed an outbuilding atop the slab (according to writing on the slab, this was done in 1957).

Hoax theoryThe hoax theory is primarily based on historical research performed by Barbara Brammer, a former mayor of Aurora. Her research (featured as part of the UFO Files episode on the incident) revealed that, in the months prior to the alleged crash, Aurora had been beset by a series of tragic incidents. First, the local cotton crop (the major source of town revenue) was destroyed by a boll weevil infestation. Second, a fire on the town's west side claimed several buildings and lives. Shortly after the fire, a spotted fever epidemic hit the town, nearly wiping out the remaining citizens and placing the town under quarantine. Finally, a planned railroad got within 27 miles of Aurora, but never made it into the town. Essentially, Aurora (which claimed nearly 3,000 residents at the time) was in serious danger of dying out; Brammer's research also showed that Haydon was known in the town to be a bit of a jokester, and her conclusion is that Haydon's article was a last-ditch attempt to keep Aurora alive.

The theory was further supported by the fact that Haydon never performed any sort of follow-up on the story, not even to report on the alien's burial, which is highly unusual given the significance of the event.

Further, in 1979 Time magazine interviewed Etta Pegues who claimed that Haydon had fabricated the entire story, stating that Haydon "wrote it as a joke and to bring interest to Aurora. The railroad bypassed us, and the town was dying."[3]

Location of Aurora, near Dallas, TexasPegues further claimed that Judge Proctor never operated a windmill on his property, a statement later refuted as part of the UFO Hunters episode.

InvestigationsThe incident has been investigated on numerous occasions. Two of these investigations were aired on cable television.

[edit] UFO Files investigationOn December 2, 2005, UFO Files first aired an episode related to this incident, titled "Texas' Roswell". The episode featured a 1973 investigation led by Bill Case, an aviation writer for the Dallas Times Herald[6] and the Texas state director of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

MUFON uncovered two new eyewitnesses to the crash. Mary Evans, who was 15 at the time, told of how her parents went to the crash site (they forbade her from going) and the discovery of the alien body. Charlie Stephens, who was age 10, told how he saw the airship trailing smoke as it headed north toward Aurora. He wanted to see what happened, but his father made him finish his chores; later, he told how his father went to town the next day and saw wreckage from the crash.

MUFON's investigation uncovered a piece of metal, reportedly from the wreckage, that upon further analysis was revealed to be composed of 95% aluminum and 5% iron, with no traces of zinc.[1] This alloy is very uncommon in nature (and the lack of zinc, normally present with iron, even more uncommon), and combined with other analysis which stated that the metal was air-cooled on the ground, led to the assertion raised in MUFON's report that, given the presumption that it originated in 1897, the sample could not be of terrestrial nature. However, MUFON's report does not discount the explanation that the sample was simply left there at some point during the last century; as discussed in the episode, analyses performed on other purported pieces revealed iron-zinc alloys common to farms such as those around Aurora. Furthermore, Oates declined to allow MUFON to uncover the well.

MUFON then investigated the Aurora Cemetery, and uncovered a grave marker that appeared to show a flying saucer of some sort, as well as readings from its metal detector. MUFON asked for permission to exhume the site, but the cemetery association declined permission. After the MUFON investigation, the marker mysteriously disappeared from the cemetery and a three-inch pipe was placed into the ground; MUFON's metal detector no longer picked up metal readings from the grave, thus it was presumed that the metal was removed from the grave.

MUFON's report eventually stated that the evidence was inconclusive, but did not rule out the possibility of a hoax. The episode featured an interview with Mayor Brammer who discussed the town's tragic history.

[edit] UFO Hunters investigationOn November 19, 2008, UFO Hunters first aired another television documentary regarding the Aurora incident, titled "First Contact".

The documentary featured one notable change from the UFO Files story – Tim Oates, nephew of Brawley Oates and the now-owner of the property with the sealed well where the UFO wreckage was purportedly buried, allowed the investigators to unseal the well, in order to examine it for possible debris. Water was taken from the well which tested normal except for large amounts of aluminum present; the well had no significant contents. It was stated in the episode that any large pieces of metal had been removed from the well by a past owner of the property. Further, the remains of a windmill base were found near the well site, which refuted Ms. Pegues' statements (from the 1979 Time magazine article) that Judge Proctor never had a windmill on his property.

In addition, the Aurora Cemetery was again examined. Although the cemetery association still did not permit exhumation, using ground-penetrating radar and photos from prior visits, an unmarked grave was found in the area near other 1890's graves.[7][8] However, the condition of the grave was badly deteriorated, and the radar could not conclusively prove what type of remains existed.

June 24, 1947 Kenneth Arnold Sightings

2011-01-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

This shows the report Kenneth Arnold filed in 1947 about his UFO sighting.The post World War II UFO phase in the United States began with a famous sighting by American businessman Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 while flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, Washington. He reported seeing nine brilliantly bright objects flying across the face of Rainier.

This shows Kenneth Arnold holding a picture of a drawing of the crescent shaped UFO he saw in 1947.Although there were other 1947 U.S. sightings of similar objects that preceded this, it was Arnold's sighting that first received significant media attention and captured the public's imagination. Arnold described what he saw as being "flat like a pie pan", "shaped like saucers and were so thin I could barely see them… ", "half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. … they looked like a big flat disk" (see Arnold's drawing at right), and flew "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water". (One of the objects, however, he would describe later as crescent-shaped, as shown in illustration at left.) Arnold’s descriptions were widely reported and within a few days gave rise to the terms flying saucer and flying disk. Arnold’s sighting was followed in the next few weeks by hundreds of other reported sightings, mostly in the U.S., but in other countries as well. After reports of the Arnold sighting hit the media, other cases began to be reported in increasing numbers. In one instance a United Airlines crew sighting of nine more disc-like objects over Idaho on the evening of July 4. At the time, this sighting was even more widely reported than Arnold’s and lent considerable credence to Arnold’s report.

American UFO researcher Ted Bloecher, in his comprehensive review of newspaper reports (including cases that preceded Arnold's), found a sudden surge upwards in sightings on July 4, peaking on July 6–8. Bloecher noted that for the next few days most American newspapers were filled with front-page stories of the new "flying saucers" or "flying discs". Reports began to rapidly tail off after July 8,when officials began issuing press statements on the Roswell UFO incident, in which they explained debris found on the ground by a rancher as being that of a weather balloon.

Over several years in the 1960s, Bloecher (aided by physicist James E. McDonald) discovered 853 flying disc sightings that year from 140 newspapers from Canada, Washington D.C, and every U.S. state except Montana.

PROJECT 1947

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COPY

BY KENNETH ARNOLD
The following story of what I observed over the Cascade mountains, as impossible as it may seem, is positively true. I never asked nor wanted any notoriety for just accidentally being in the right spot at the right time to observe what I did. I reported something that I know any pilot would have reported. I don't think that in any way my observation was due to any sensitivity of eye sight or judgment than what is considered normal for any pilot.

On June 24th, Tuesday, 1947, I had finished my work for the Central Air Service at Chehalis, Washington, and at about two o'clock I took off from Chehalis, Washington, airport with the intention of going to Yakima, Wash. My trip was delayed for an hour to search for a large marine transport that supposedly went down near or around the southwest side of Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington and to date has never been found.

I flew directly toward Mt. Rainier after reaching an altitude of about 9,500 feet, which is the approximate elevation of the high plateau from which Mt. Rainier rises. I had made one sweep of this high plateau to the westward, searching all of the various ridges for this marine ship and flew to the west down and near the ridge side of the canyon where Ashford, Washington, is located.

Unable to see anything that looked like the lost ship, I made a 360 degree turn to the right and above the little city of Mineral, starting again toward Mt. Rainier. I climbed back up to an altitude of approximately 9,200 feet.

The air was so smooth that day that it was a real pleasure flying and, as most pilots do when the air is smooth and they are flying at a higher altitude, I trimmed out my airplane in the direction of Yakima, Washington, which was almost directly east of my position and simply sat in my plane observing the sky and the terrain.

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There was a DC-4 to the left and to the rear of me approximately fifteen miles distance, and I should judge, at 14,000 foot elevation.

The sky and air was clear as crystal. I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn't find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 foot elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees.

They were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly, and I merely assumed they were jet planes. Anyhow, I discovered that this was where the reflection had come from, as two or three of them every few seconds would dip or change their course slightly, just enough for the sun to strike them at an angle that reflected brightly on my plane.

These objects being quite far away, I was unable for a few seconds to make out their shape or their formation. Very shortly they approached Mt. Rainier, and I observed their outline against the snow quite plainly.

I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn't find their tails but assumed they were some type of jet plane. I was determined to clock their speed, as I had two definite points I could clock them by; the air was so clear that it was very easy to see objects and determine their approximate shape and size at almost fifty miles that day.

I remember distinctly that my sweep second hand on my eight day clock, which is located on my instrument panel, read one minute to 3 P.M. as the first object of this formation passed the southern edge of Mt. Rainier. I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed

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airplanes flying so close to the mountain tops, flying directly south to southeast down the hog's back of a mountain range. I would estimate their elevation could have varied a thousand feet one way or another up or down, but they were pretty much on the horizon to me which would indicate they were near the same elevation as I was.

They flew like many times I have observed geese to fly in a rather diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together. They seemed to hold a definite direction but rather swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks. Their speed at the time did not impress me particularly, because I knew that our army and air forces had planes that went very fast.

What kept bothering me as I watched them flip and flash in the sun right along their path was the fact that I couldn't make out any tail on them, and I am sure that any pilot would justify more than a second look at such a plane.

I observed them quite plainly, and I estimate my distance from them, which was almost at right angles, to be between twenty to twenty-five miles. I knew they must be very large to observe their shape at that distance, even on as clear a day as it was that Tuesday, In fact I compared a zeus fastener or cowling tool I had in my pocket with them - holding it up on them and holding it up on the DC-4 - that I could observe at quite a distance to my left, and they seemed smaller than the DC-4; but, I should judge their span would have been as wide as the furtherest engines on each side of the fuselage of the DC-4.

The more I observed these objects the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. I observed the chain of these objects passing another high snow-covered rIdge in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams

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and as, the first one was passing the south crest of this ridge the last object was entering the northern crest of the ridge.

As I was flying in the direction of this particular ridge, I measured it and found it to be approximately five miles so I could safely assume that the chain of these saucer like objects were at least five miles long. I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact that there were several high peaks that were a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway.

As the last unit of this formation passed the southern most high snow-covered crest of Mt. Adams, I looked at my sweep second hand and it showed that they had travelled the distance in one minute and forty-two seconds. Even at the time this timing did not upset me as I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw.

A number of news men and experts suggested that I might have been seeing reflections or even a mirage. This I know to be absolutely false, as I observed these objects not only through the glass of my airplane but turned my airplane sideways where I could open my window and observe them with a completely unobstructed view. (Without sun glasses)

Even though two minutes seems like a very short time to one on the ground, in the air in two minutes time a pilot can observe a great many things and anything within his sight of vision probably as many as fifty or sixty times.

I continued my search for the marine plane for another fifteen or twenty minutes and while searching for this marine plane, what I had just observed kept going through my mind. I became more disturbed, so after taking a last look at Tieton Reservoir I headed for Yakima.

I might add that my complete observation of these objects, which I could even follow by their flashes as they passed Mt. Adams, was around two

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and one-half or three minutes -- although, by the time they reached Mt. Adams they were out of my range of vision as far as determining shape or form. Of course, when the sun reflected from one or two or three of these units, they appeared to be completely round; but, I am making a drawing to the best of my ability, which I am including, as to the shape I observed these objects to be as they passed the snow covered ridges as well as Mt. Rainier.

When these objects were flying approximately straight and level, they were just a black thin line and when they flipped was the only time I could get a judgment as to their size.

These objects were holding an almost constant elevation; they did not seem to be going up or coming down, such as would be the case of rockets or artillery shells. I am convinced in my own mind that they were some type of airplane, even though they didn't conform with the many aspects of the conventional type of planes that I know.

Although these objects have been reported by many other observers throughout the United States, there have been six or seven other accounts written by some of these observers that I can truthfully say must have observed the same thing that I did; particularly, the descriptions of the three Western [Cedar City, Utah] Air Lines employees, the gentleman [pilot] from Oklahoma City and the locomotive engineer from Illinois, plus Capt Smith and Co-Pilot Stevens of United Air Lines.

Some descriptions could not be very accurate taken from the ground unless these saucer-like disks were at a great height and there is a possibility that all of the people who observed peculiar objects could have seen the same thing I did, but, it would have been very difficult from the ground to observe these for more than four or five seconds, and there is always the possibility of atmospheric moisture and dust near the ground which could distort one's vision.

I have in my possession letters from all over the Unites States and people who profess that these objects have been observed over other portions of the world,

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principally Sweden, Bermuda, and California.

I would have given almost anything that day to have had a movie camera with a telephoto lens and from now on I will never be without one - - but, to continue further with my story. When I landed at Yakima, Wash., airport I described what I had seen to my very good friend, Al Baxter, who listened patiently and was very courteous but in a joking way didn't believe me.

I did not accurately measure the distance between these two mountains until I landed at Pendleton, Oregon, that same day where I told a number of pilot friends of mine what I had observed and they did not scoff or laugh but suggested they might be guided missiles or something new. In fact several former Army pilots informed me that they had been briefed before going into combat overseas that they might see objects of similar shape and design as I described and assured me that I wasn't dreaming or going crazy.

I quote Sonny Robinson, a former Army Air Forces pilot who is now operating dusting operations at Pendleton, Oregon, "What you observed, I am convinced, is some type of jet or rocket propelled ship that is in the process of being tested by our government or even it could possibly be by some foreign government."

Anyhow, the news that I had observed these spread very rapidly and before the night was over I was receiving telephone calls from all parts of the world; and, to date, I have not received one telephone call or one letter of scoffing or disbelief. the only disbelief that I know of was what was printed in the papers.

I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the

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FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors.

I have received lots of requests from people who told me to make a lot of wild guesses. I have based what I have written here in this article on positive facts and as far as guessing what it was I observed, it is just as much a mystery to me as it is to the rest of the world.

My pilot's license is 333487. I fly a Callair airplane; it is a three-place single engine land ship that is designed and manufactured at Afton, Wyoming as an extremely high performance, high altitude airplane that was made for mountain work. The national certificate of my plane is 33355

/s/ Kenneth Arnold
Box 587
Boise, Idaho

They seemed longer than wide, their thickness was about 1/20th their width

Mirror Bright

They did not appear to me to whirl or spin but seemed in fixed position

traveling as I have made drawing.

/s/ Kenneth Arnold

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