UFO Chronology

Index Page , ET Data , UFO Data

Ancient Times (BCE)

1500-14550 BCE. Red Flag: Pharaoh Thutmose III. Fiery disc. (1)
This report is believed to be a modern hoax derived from the story of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. (7)

Between 1300 and 1150 BCE. Controversial: Hebrew prophet Moses (pillar of fire, cloud) (1)
Sixth century BCE. Controversial: Ezekiel (debatable interpretation) (1)
384-322 BCE. Aristotle (heavenly disks) (1)
329 BCE. Alexander the Great (flying shields) (1)

Premodern (CE)

1088. Shen Kuo (1031–1095). Chinese scholar-official wrote a vivid passage in his Dream Pool Essays about an unidentified flying object.
1561. Nuremberg, Germany (Hans Glaser's woodcut showing UFOs) (1)
1561. Tubingen, Germany. Aerial objects resembling large hats. (7)
1663. Robozero, Russia (also called The Robozero Marvel)
Late 1800s. Airship Wave
1878. Swift-Watson observations. Two astronomers reported seeing discoid or planet-like objects during eclipse. (7)
January 22, 1878. Denison, Texas. John Martin. First to use the word "saucer" in UFO sighting was reported in the Denison Daily News.
1883 Zacatecas, Mexico. Mexican astronomer Jose Bonilla observed objects moving in groups acrosss the face of the sun.
1886 French sci-fi author Jules Verne's novel Robur le conquerant (Robur the Conqueror) (7)
November 25, 1896. Lodi, California. Colonel H. G. Shaw and Camille Spooner, attemped abduction by three ETs and airship reported in newspapers of the day. (11)
April 28, 1897. Red Flag: Le Roy Kansas. Alexander Hamilton's story of "calfnapping" by airship. (11)
February 28, 1904. San Francisco, CA. USS Supply Lt. Frank Schofield and crew spotted three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation.
1908. Controversial: Tunguska, Siberia explosion event (UFO speculation). (7)
1914. Georgia Bay, Canada. Spherial UFO at lake.
January 31, 1916. UK. A UK pilot near Rochford reported a row of lights, like lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared.
1917. Controversial: Fatima, Portugal (debatable interpretation)
1926. A pilot reported six "flying manhole covers" between Wichita, Kansas and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1930s. Ghost Aircraft
1933. RS/33 (Ricerche Speciale [Special Research] 33) Cabinet to study the 'Velivoli Non Convenzionali' (unconventional aircraft) started in Italy by Mussolini. (13/p.13)
1934. Coral E. Lorenzen, the founder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization hemispherical-shaped object sighting. (11
June 1935. Astounding Stories magazine cover of an alien abduction. (11)
1938. Orson Welles's The War Of The Worlds radio adaptation of the H. G. Wells's novel.
1941. The Books of Charles Fort" by Tiffany Thayer was published by Henry Holte and Company, New York.
1943. Foo Fighters
1946. Swedish Ghost Rockets
April 1947. U.S. Weather Bureau sighting of metallic disks through theodolite telescope.

Modern Era

June 24, 1947. Kenneth Arnold sighting (popularized the term "flying saucer") ushering in the modern era in Ufology.

June 26, 1947. United States - sightings

Kenneth Arnold's report set off a veritable celestial chain reaction. And within a few days, the fabulous "flying saucers" had spun into the national spotlight. Observers reported sighting flying "chromium hub caps," flying "dimes," flying "tear drops," flying "gas lights," "ice cream cones," and flying "pie plates."

Early July, 1947. Roswell, NM. Army Air Force (AAF) issued a press release saying "Flying Disk" had been recovered.

July 8, 1947. Muroc Air Base (Edwards Air Force Base) disc sightings.

The sightings made a particular impression on the Air Force, according to Edward. J. Ruppelt, who would head one of its subsequent UFO projects. (4)
1948. Raymond Palmer Fate Magazine. Cover story "flyng discs" first issue. (7)
January 7, 1948. Conflicting: Thomas Mantell, Godman Army Air Field-Fort Knox, Kentucky. (1) (2)
January 22, 1948. Project SAUCER
1948. Project SIGN.

Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical Service Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might be real and of national security concern.
January 23, 1948. Project SIGN.

The Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, assumed control of Project SIGN.
Late 1940s. Project GRUDGE:

Air Force public relations campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary. UFO sightings were explained as balloons, conventional aircraft, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, or even "large hailstones."
December, 27 1949. The Air Force announced Project GRUDGE was terminated.
1950 Frank Scully's book Behind the Flying Saucers.
May 11, 1950. McMinnville, Oregon. Paul Trent's famous photographs of a disk-shaped object.

Paul Trent photo.

1951. Movie: The Day The Earth Stood Still
1952. Washington National Airport:

A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared.
October 17, 1952. Oloron, France. (1) Mass UFO sighting.
1952. Project BLUE BOOK

USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell ordered a new UFO project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major Air Force effort to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that UFOs were not extraordinary. Projects SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US Government position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.
1952. CIA OSI Study Group lead by A. Ray Gordon, OSI's (Office of Scientific Intelligence) Physics and Electronics Division was to coordinate closely with ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Center).
Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.
January 1953. The Robertson Panel.

Chadwell and H. P. Robertson, a noted physicist from the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue. The panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities.
January 14 - 18, 1953, The Durant report of the Robertson Panel proceedings.
1953. Air Force Regulation 200-2.
1956. The Report on Unidintified Flying Objects by Edward Rupplet to replace the term "flying saucer." (7)
November 1957. Levelland, Texas (2)
January 16, 1958. Trinidade Island, south Atlantic Ocean

The Brookings Report (1960), commissioned by NASA.
1961. Betty and Barney Hill (precursor to modern day alien abduction reports).
April 24, 1964. Socorro, New Mexico. Policeman Lonnie Zamora's close encounter.
1964. High-level White House discussions on what to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space and a new outbreak of UFO reports and sightings.
August 3, 1965. Santa Ana, California. Rex Heflin photograph.

March 21, 1966. Hillsdale, Michigan. J. Allen Hynek famous "swamp gas" explanation to UFO.
1966. The House Armed Services Committee held brief hearings on UFOs.
1966. O'Brien Committee "Special Report." "USAF Scientific Advisory Board Ad Hoc Committee to Review 'Project Blue Book'"
1967. Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace by "John Doe" (said to be a literary satire/hoax).
The Condon Report was released. United States Air Force issued a contract to the University of Colorado to carry out a scientific study of evidence concerning the UFO phenomenon.
1968. Symposium On Unidentified Flying Objects, U.S. House of representatives, Committee on Science and Astronautics.
The private, internal RAND Corporation study (1968).
December 17, 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the termination of Project BLUE BOOK.
October 11, 1973. Pascagoula, Mississippi (1)
1974. Rumors of saucer crashes with small bodies retreaved and hidden by the Air Force. All purported witnesses state that the incidents occured some time during the 1950s. Perpetuated by a wave of television and radio reports declaring that frozen alien corpses were being held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
September 1976. Teheran
1977. Movie: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
1978. Ufologist Leonard Springfield announced that he had reports from twenty-four unimpeachable sources that spaceships and frozen alien corpses are being held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

1980. The Roswell Incident was published in the Summer of 1980 by William L. Moore and Charles Berlitz.
1982. Movie: E.T.: The Extraterrestrial
1983-84. The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings
1986. Japanese Airline pilort's sighting of giant walnut-shaped UFOs over Alaska.

Pilot's drawing (taken from his official report)

1987. Whitley Strieber's book Communion
September 21, 1987. Ronald Reagan's alien threat speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

October, 21. 1987. Wytheville, Virginia.

1989. The Belgium UFO Flap
July 11, 1991. Mexico Solar Eclipse. Mass disc sighting.

August 1993. Melbourne, Australia.

Kelly Cahill abduction

1990s. Movie: Independence Day
1996–1999. The French COMETA panel.
1997. The Phoenix lights
1998. The private Sturrock Panel.
2001. Dr. Steven Greer's Disclosure Press Conference
2006. Chicago's O'Hare Airport Disc Sighting
March 2007. French Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online.
January 8, 2008. Stephenville, Texas. Fighter jets pursue large UFO described as having no seams or riveting.
May 14, 2008. MoD releases UFO files to the UK National Archives.

Resources:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object.html

Red Flag =	fake or suspect testimony
Conflicting =	conflicting information from different sources
Controversial =	controversial interpretation