50 Fun Facts About Roswell Incident

In which US state is Roswell?

The debris was actually found near Corona, about 75 miles away, but the air base that handled it was in Roswell.

In which year did the Roswell incident take place?

It came in the first summer of the Cold War, weeks after Kenneth Arnold's sighting launched the flying-saucer craze.

What did the Roswell debris actually come from?

The linked balloons and equipment were designed to listen for Soviet nuclear tests; the weather-balloon story was the cover.

What was Project Mogul intended to detect?

It flew from 1947 to early 1949 and was superseded by cheaper seismic detectors and air sampling.

Which rancher found the debris on the land he managed near Corona?

He had no phone or radio and only heard about 'flying disks' from his uncle on 5 July.

What did the rancher tell the Roswell Daily Record the debris consisted of?

The paper also noted that no engine or metal parts had been found.

From which base was the Mogul balloon train launched on 4 June 1947?

Contact was lost within 17 miles of Brazel's ranch; the Air Force later pinned the debris on Flight No. 4.

Whose sighting near Mount Rainier on 24 June 1947 set off the flying-saucer craze?

The private pilot saw nine shiny objects he estimated at 1,200 mph; over 800 similar reports followed.

What was Roswell Army Air Field notable for in 1947?

The 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force was based there.

Which two officers were sent with the rancher to gather the material from the ranch?

Cavitt later swore he thought at the time, and still thought, that it was a crashed balloon.

Who issued the 8 July 1947 press release announcing the recovery of a 'flying disc'?

Decades later he co-founded Roswell's UFO museum with Glenn Dennis and Max Littell.

Which general identified the material as a weather balloon at a Fort Worth press conference?

Weather officer Irving Newton said similar radar targets were used at about 80 weather stations.

A hoax 'crashed disc' days after Roswell, in Twin Falls, Idaho, turned out to be built from what?

Four teenagers made it; broader saucer reporting faded soon after.

Which 1948 con introduced small grey bodies and super-strong metal to UFO lore?

Con artists sold the story to Variety columnist Frank Scully.

'Hangar 18', where legend says recovered corpses were kept, is supposedly at which Ohio installation?

The Air Force says no such hangar exists; the story echoes a 1968 novel, The Fortec Conspiracy.

Which ufologist rekindled interest by interviewing Jesse Marcel in 1978?

A nuclear physicist based in Canada, he later found Glenn Dennis too.

Which TV series, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aired Marcel's account in 1980?

'We both knew differently,' Marcel said of the weather-balloon explanation.

Marcel's son recalled 'purple-hued hieroglyphics' on a beam. What did they match?

Project Mogul used the toy-company tape; Brazel's daughter remembered foil showing 'pastel flowers'.

Who wrote the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, the first Roswell conspiracy book?

Berlitz had already written about the Bermuda Triangle; Friedman was credited only as an investigator.

What did The Roswell Incident add to the story that Marcel himself never mentioned?

They were supposedly found on the Plains of San Agustin, about 150 miles from the debris field.

According to the 1980 book, what killed the alien crew?

The saucer was supposedly observing nuclear weapons activity over New Mexico.

What was 'Majestic 12'?

The photographs of documents arrived anonymously in 1984; Bill Moore later confessed to feeding fake evidence to researchers.

Which famous astronomer mocked the Majestic 12 papers as 'something out of a fairy story'?

A Truman signature on the papers proved identical to one on a genuine 1947 letter to Vannevar Bush.

Which Air Force disinformation officer admitted feeding fabricated UFO material to researchers from Kirtland AFB?

Bennewitz was the target of the earliest known 'MJ Twelve' document, in 1981.

What was Glenn Dennis's profession when he became Roswell's 'star witness' in 1989?

He claimed calls from the base about small caskets and a nurse who saw an alien autopsy.

What happened when researchers checked on the woman Glenn Dennis said had witnessed the autopsy?

Naomi Self became Naomi Sipes; leading ufologists concluded no bodies were recovered at all.

Which TV programme's 1989 Roswell episode was watched by 28 million people?

It also dramatised Dennis's account in 1994, the year of the TV movie Roswell.

Which congressman's 1993 inquiry led to the Air Force reports of the 1990s?

The General Accounting Office directed the Secretary of the Air Force to investigate.

What did the 1994 Air Force report admit about the weather-balloon explanation?

The 1995 follow-up, Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, tied the debris to Mogul Flight No. 4.

The 1997 report Case Closed explained stories of alien bodies as memories of what?

Operation High Dive dropped dummies over the desert in the 1950s and retrieved them in casket-shaped crates and insulation bags.

Which British entrepreneur claimed in 1995 to have footage of an alien autopsy from Roswell?

He admitted in 2006 it was staged on a set in a London living room; over twenty million viewers had watched it.

Which effects expert said Alien Autopsy misrepresented his view that the footage was an obvious fake?

Fox aired the programme just before The X-Files, which later parodied it.

Which senator demanded his foreword be removed from Philip Corso's 1997 book The Day After Roswell?

Corso had misled him about the book's contents; it wrongly placed the Eighth Air Force HQ at Fort Bliss.

Annie Jacobsen's 2011 Area 51 book claimed the Roswell 'aliens' were child-sized aviators created by whom?

Historian Richard Rhodes called the reporting 'error-ridden' and 'old news'.

Slides shown as a dead alien at Jaime Maussan's 2015 UFO conference depicted what?

It had been on display for decades at the Chapin Mesa museum in Mesa Verde, Colorado.

Which president said he had 'all the Roswell papers reviewed' to avoid 'gazillions of letters'?

His administration found no evidence of alien contact; Obama later called the secret material 'a little disappointing'.

Which 1996 blockbuster reveals a Roswell crash and cover-up, complete with experiments on alien corpses?

Indiana Jones went hunting a Roswell alien body in the 2008 Crystal Skull film.

In which Deep Space Nine episode do the characters travel to 1947 and trigger the Roswell incident?

Its director James L. Conway had made the 1980 film Hangar 18, which he called a dramatisation of Roswell.

Roughly how many tourists visit Roswell each year?

A UFO festival has run since 1995 and even the street lights are alien-themed.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell occupies what kind of building?

Founded in 1991, it is the centrepiece of the annual UFO festival.

Which rocket pioneer did much of his early work in Roswell in the 1930s?

The city's museum recreates his workshop and a high school is named after him.

The 1999–2002 WB teen drama about aliens among small-town teens was based on which books?

Jason Katims developed it; the show aired on The WB and then UPN for 61 episodes.

Which Roswell sheriff did rancher Brazel inform about the debris, prompting the call to the air field?

The base then sent Major Jesse Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt back with Brazel to gather the material.

At which Ohio base did Colonel Marcellus Duffy identify the flown-in material as balloon equipment?

Duffy knew Project Mogul and rang its project officer, but could only publicly call the debris 'meteorological equipment'.

At which Albuquerque station did teletype operator Lydia Sleppy claim her saucer story was cut off?

She said reporter Johnny McBoyle was dictating the story when an incoming message ordered her to stop.

Which 1991 Randle-Schmitt book sold 160,000 copies and became the basis of a 1994 TV film?

Their 1994 follow-up claimed a cargo plane delivered alien bodies to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Friedman's 1992 book Crash at Corona raised the number of saucers to two and the aliens to how many?

Two of the aliens were said to have survived and been taken into government custody.

In 1990 John Keel proposed the Roswell debris came from what kind of wartime device?

An Air Force meteorologist rejected the idea because Fu-Go balloons 'could not possibly have stayed aloft for two years'.

Roughly how many viewers watched the 1995 Alien Autopsy broadcast, aired by Fox just before The X-Files?

The X-Files later parodied the film, which set a template for pseudo-documentaries about cover-ups.

Which American Dad! character is an alien who crashed at Roswell?

Futurama's 'Roswell That Ends Well' has 31st-century time travellers cause the incident themselves.