Classic cases

The best-known UFO cases with sources and a sober take: what happened, what was investigated, and what remains unexplained.

July 8, 1947 – Roswell, 1947: How Did a Torn Balloon Become the World's Most Famous UFO Story? (Corona and the Roswell area, New Mexico, United States · Explained). In July 1947, a U.S. Army air base announced that a "flying disc" had been found on a New Mexico ranch. That same evening it was stated that it had only been a weather balloon, and within days the news was forgotten. Thirty years later the story was reborn, this time with a crashed spacecraft, alien bodies and a secret autopsy. Today Roswell is the world's most famous UFO case, and also the best example of how a small news item becomes a legend.
June 24, 1947 – The Day the “Flying Saucer” Was Born: The Kenneth Arnold Case, 1947 (Cascade Range, between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, Washington State, USA, United States · Disputed). On June 24, 1947, a private pilot from Idaho saw nine bright, fast-moving objects over Washington’s Cascade Range. Within days, Kenneth Arnold’s account had spread through the American press, and one of his comparisons gave rise to the term “flying saucer.” The Air Force eventually classified the case as a mirage, but exactly what Arnold saw is still debated today.
December 1948 – Edward Teller and the Green Fireballs: Mysterious Lights over the City of the Atomic Bomb (United States · Disputed). In December 1948, bright green orbs began streaking across the skies of New Mexico, right where the United States' most secret nuclear weapons research was taking place. Pilots swerved to avoid them, Edward Teller took part in the conference at Los Alamos, and the Air Force built an observation network. No solution was ever found, however. This year, a newly released letter has brought the case back into the spotlight.
1949 – Saucers over Catalina Island: four old Air Force reports from the Pentagon files (Catalina Island, United States). The Pentagon's October 23 batch of files includes four reports about Santa Catalina Island off Los Angeles. Six lights appearing one after another, a silvery body that seemed to fall apart before the eyes of three Boy Scouts, a purplish-white dot and a falling orange light – between 1949 and 1955. In two of the cases, the Air Force investigators of the time themselves suggested an ordinary explanation.
January 1950 – A “UFO” behind John Wayne: what is zigzagging in a scene from Rio Grande? (United States · No official position). In an evening scene of John Ford’s 1950 Western, a point of light zigzags in the background next to John Wayne’s head. A viewer discovered the footage in 2005, and since then there has been talk of an alien spacecraft, drunk special effects men and glinting wires. There is still no definitive answer today, but the clues point in one direction.
July 2, 1952 – The Tremonton film: swirling lights over Utah (Tremonton, United States · Explained). In the summer of 1952, a Navy chief photographer filmed a dozen bright, swirling objects in the sky over Utah. Air Force and Navy laboratories spent months analyzing the footage and reached opposite conclusions. In September, the Pentagon released the complete case file.
July 19, 1952 – “Saucers Swarm Over Capital”: the Washington UFO wave, 1952 (Washington, United States · Disputed). In July 1952, on two consecutive weekends, several radars in the American capital picked up unknown targets. Air traffic controllers and pilots saw lights, fighter jets were sent into the night sky, and the news went around the world. President Truman also asked for an explanation, and at its biggest press conference since the war the Air Force put the whole thing down to a weather phenomenon. Many still do not accept that explanation to this day, but the consequences of the case shaped for decades how the U.S. government talks about UFOs.
November 2, 1957 – Levelland, 1957: The Night the Cars Stalled One After Another (United States · Explained). During the night of November 2–3, 1957, within a few hours, several car and truck drivers near Levelland, Texas, reported that their engines stalled and their lights went out near a glowing, egg-shaped object. The Air Force attributed the case to ball lightning. According to critics, there was not even a thunderstorm nearby that night.
September 19, 1961 – Betty and Barney Hill, 1961: two lost hours that gave birth to the UFO abduction (New Hampshire, United States). In September 1961, a Portsmouth couple saw a bright point of light above the mountains of New Hampshire, and when they got home they felt that two hours were missing from their night. Years later, under hypnosis, they spoke of alien beings and of a medical examination carried out aboard a spacecraft. Their story became the first widely known UFO abduction, and to this day it shapes how we picture the "Grays." The catch is that their own hypnotist did not believe it.
December 9, 1965 – Kecksburg, 1965: A Fireball, a Sealed-Off Forest and the Lost NASA Records (United States · Disputed). In December 1965, a bright fireball streaked across the northeastern United States and Canada, and residents of a Pennsylvania village said something had crashed into the woods. The authorities found nothing, and astronomers considered it a meteor. Twenty-five years later, after a TV show, it became the "Pennsylvania Roswell," and during a lawsuit NASA acknowledged that its records on the case had been lost.
April 6, 1966 – The Westall Case Has Remained Unsolved for Sixty Years (Westall, Australia · No official position). On April 6, 1966, students and teachers at a Melbourne school watched a silvery object in the sky that was accompanied by light aircraft. The case became Australia's most famous UFO story, but there is a large gap between the contemporary accounts and the stories that have accumulated on top of them over sixty years. Some of the official records were destroyed, and to this day there is no official explanation.
October 20, 1973 – 53 years ago: creatures in the El Yunque rainforest (El Yunque mountain, Puerto Rico · No official position). On the night of October 20, 1973, nine people climbed one of the peaks of Puerto Rico's rainforest to see UFOs. By morning they were telling of unknown figures, giant footprints leading to the parking lot, and later of a haunting at home. It is one of the strangest cases of the great 1973 UFO wave, and it shows well how a story grows as it is retold.
August 25, 1974 – Coyame, 1974 – Mexico's Roswell (Coyame, Mexico). Radar tracked it, a small plane crashed, Mexican soldiers died, and an American commando team carried off a metal disc from the Chihuahuan desert – or so the legend of the "Mexican Roswell" goes. However, the detailed story of the 1974 Coyame UFO collision only surfaced in 1992, in an anonymous mailing. We looked into what remains of it once the tale is separated from the sources.
October 21, 1978 – "It's not an aircraft": Frederick Valentich's last flight over the Bass Strait, 1978 (Australia). On the evening of October 21, 1978, a 20-year-old Australian pilot, Frederick Valentich, spent six minutes describing over the radio to a Melbourne controller a bright, unknown object circling above his small Cessna, then fell silent after a strange, metallic noise. Neither he nor his aircraft was ever found. The case became Australia's most famous UFO story, but according to the official investigation the cause of the disappearance could not be determined, and the down-to-earth explanations are at least as interesting as the mystery itself.
December 1980 – Rendlesham Forest 1980: Lights, a Memorandum and a Lighthouse (Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, United Kingdom · Disputed). In December 1980, American servicemen reported unknown lights over two nights in a forest next to an air base in England, and the base's deputy commander was among them. The case became known as "Britain's Roswell," but according to skeptics, everyday light phenomena were misinterpreted.
November 17, 1986 – "The size of two aircraft carriers": What did the captain of JAL 1628 see over Alaska? (Eastern Alaska, between Fort Yukon and Fairbanks, United States · Disputed). In November 1986, the captain of a Japanese Boeing 747 freighter reported that over Alaska two smaller objects and one enormous object, "the size of two aircraft carriers," accompanied his plane. Military radar seemed to confirm it, and the story went around the world press. The U.S. aviation authority ultimately could not support the account, but the full investigation file is public today, and it reveals a great deal.
November 29, 1989 – Black triangles over Belgium: from the gendarmes' night to the F-16s (Belgium · Unexplained). In the late afternoon of November 29, 1989, two Belgian gendarmes near Eupen followed a huge, dark triangle with a bright light shining at each of its three corners. This was the start of one of Europe's best-known UFO waves, during which the air force also scrambled fighter jets. Many of the reports were later given earthly explanations, and the most famous photo turned out to be a hoax, but some cases remain disputed to this day.
January 20, 1996 – The Varginha ET: how a rainy afternoon became Brazil’s Roswell (Brazil · Explained). In January 1996, three young women in a small Brazilian town saw a red-eyed figure crouching by a wall. Over thirty years, the story grew into a legend of captured creatures, a secret autopsy and American cargo planes. Meanwhile, the Army’s inquiry, and eventually the case’s first investigator, reached a very different conclusion.
March 13, 1997 – Phoenix Lights: Two Phenomena, Two Explanations, One Much-Disputed Evening (Phoenix, Arizona, United States · Disputed). On the evening of March 13, 1997, thousands of Arizonans saw strange lights in the sky: first a huge, V-shaped formation, then, two hours later, a row of motionless, hovering balls of light over Phoenix. The case became one of the most widely seen UFO phenomena in America, complete with a governor's prank and a confession a decade later. The key to the explanation is that two separate events took place, and the same military exercise was probably behind both.
November 14, 2004 – The "Tic Tac": What did the Nimitz pilots see in 2004? (World · Unexplained). On November 14, 2004, two U.S. Navy fighter jets were directed to an unknown radar target over the Pacific Ocean. The pilots saw a white, wingless, pill-shaped object that, according to them, disappeared from in front of them at astonishing speed. The Pentagon officially released the infrared video of the incident in 2020, and still considers the object unidentified.