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