66 Fun Facts About UFO

Which U.S. Air Force captain coined the acronym 'UFO'?

Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Blue Book's first chief, is credited with the term: he wrote that 'flying saucer' was misleading for objects of every conceivable shape.

Which term have NASA and the Pentagon adopted in place of 'UFO'?

UAP has spread because 'UFO' became tied to alien spaceships, and the broader term avoids that cultural baggage.

Near which mountain did pilot Kenneth Arnold report a chain of nine shining objects on June 24, 1947?

Mount Rainier was where a Marine Corps C-46 transport had crashed, and Arnold was detouring to hunt for it because finding the wreck carried a $5,000 reward.

Which 1997 film grew out of a comic book inspired by UFO folklore?

Men in Black drew on 1950s UFO lore: ufologist Albert Bender said three men in dark suits had warned him to stop investigating.

The debris found near Roswell in 1947 came from a balloon train belonging to which top-secret program?

Project Mogul flew microphones on high-altitude balloons to listen for Soviet atomic tests, a secret that the 1947 weather-balloon story kept hidden.

Which rancher found tinfoil, rubber, tape and beams scattered across a New Mexico ranch in 1947?

Mac Brazel took his find to Roswell's sheriff, and after the uproar the Roswell Daily Record ran 'Harassed Rancher Who Located Saucer Sorry He Told About It'.

Which retired Air Force officer claimed in 1978 the Roswell weather-balloon story was a cover?

Jesse Marcel told ufologist Stanton Friedman the debris was extraterrestrial, and the 1980 book The Roswell Incident built its crash story on his account.

The famous 1947 Roswell debris was found on a ranch outside which small New Mexico town?

Corona was the nearby town, but the case took Roswell's name because the sheriff there called Roswell Army Air Field, whose officers collected the debris.

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

Robert H. Goddard could test there for years because Charles Lindbergh persuaded the Guggenheim family to fund his rocket work.

Project Blue Book was headquartered at which Air Force base?

The base is also where Project Sign's Air Materiel Command review had been written in 1949.

In History's 2019 drama Project Blue Book, which Game of Thrones actor played astronomer J. Allen Hynek?

Aidan Gillen played Hynek, who joined the Air Force's UFO studies as a skeptic and ended up founding his own Center for UFO Studies in 1973.

Which Air Force UFO project did Project Blue Book replace in March 1952?

Project Grudge had largely set out to write reports off, and after unhappy generals intervened, Blue Book took its place in March 1952.

Which Air Force chief of staff rejected Project Sign's 1948 'Estimate of the Situation' for lack of proof?

Hoyt Vandenberg, as Blue Book's first chief later told it, wouldn't accept interplanetary craft without physical proof, so the estimate was sent back and died.

What did the 1953 Robertson Panel recommend as a way to dampen popular interest in UFOs?

A public education campaign, run through TV, films and articles, was meant to strip UFOs of the special status and aura of mystery they had acquired.

Which agency convened the Robertson Panel?

The CIA pushed for the panel after UFO reports climbed to a record high during the summer 1952 wave of sightings.

Which institution hosted the Air Force-funded project that produced the 1968 Condon Report?

The University of Colorado team concluded that further extensive UFO study probably couldn't be justified, and the Air Force closed Project Blue Book in response.

Which Blink-182 musician co-founded the UFO company that first released the Navy's unidentified-object videos?

Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy put the Navy clips out between December 2017 and March 2018, and the Pentagon officially released them in 2020.

What was Hynek's explanation for 1966 Michigan sightings that became a famous punchline?

Swamp gas was Hynek's explanation for only some of the reports, but the press derided it and newspaper cartoonists turned the phrase into a punchline.

Which Steven Spielberg film gave UFO consultant J. Allen Hynek a cameo?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind took its name from Hynek's classification of UFO reports, and he watches the alien craft arrive in the finale.

Which French filmmaker played scientist Claude Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's 1977 film?

François Truffaut played a scientist modeled on Jacques Vallée, the French ufologist whom Spielberg had consulted while making the film.

Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 abduction claim was set in which U.S. state?

New Hampshire's Division of Historical Resources later put up a historical marker where the Hills said the strange craft first approached.

Ufologists linked the star map Betty Hill said aliens showed her to which star system?

Zeta Reticuli was schoolteacher Marjorie Fish's match, but 1990s Hipparcos star distances broke it, and Fish herself later gave the idea up.

Which 1966 best-seller told Betty and Barney Hill's abduction story?

The Interrupted Journey was later turned into The UFO Incident, a 1975 NBC television film about the couple's claimed abduction.

Which director made Nope, the 2022 film about a UFO stalking a California horse ranch?

Jordan Peele's UFO in Nope turns out to be no spaceship but a territorial, predatory animal that devours people who look straight at it.

Forestry worker Travis Walton vanished for five days in 1975 in which state?

Arizona police suspected Walton's crew, who had fled believing him dead, and they took polygraph tests over whether they had killed him.

Travis Walton's account was adapted into which 1993 film?

Fire in the Sky loosely adapted Walton's 1978 book The Walton Experience, which was then reissued under the film's title.

The Phoenix Lights of March 13, 1997 were traced to aircraft from which pilot training program?

Operation Snowbird's A-10 jets explain both sightings: one formation flew over Phoenix, while a different A-10 flight later dropped illumination flares.

Which governor joked about the Phoenix Lights with a costumed aide, then later said he had seen a UFO himself?

Fife Symington said the alien-costume stunt was meant to calm a state gripped by panic, and a decade passed before he revealed his own sighting.

The Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980 took place outside which air base?

RAF Woodbridge's east gate is where a security patrol first saw lights dropping into the forest, and deputy base commander Charles Halt later led men in.

Skeptics attribute the pulsing glow seen by Rendlesham airmen to which structure?

Orfordness Lighthouse was the only light that the police called to the scene said they could see, which is why skeptics think the airmen followed its beam.

What shape were the objects reported during the Belgian UFO wave of 1989-90?

Triangular craft dominated the reports, though the wave's most famous photo was admitted in 2011 to show a polystyrene model fitted with lights.

In 1994, dozens of schoolchildren reported a landed craft and strange beings near Ruwa in which country?

Zimbabwe-based UFO investigator Cynthia Hind reached the school within days and had the children draw what they had seen.

In the 1976 Tehran incident, which type of fighter jets reported losing instruments near the object?

F-4 Phantom II trouble went beyond instruments: one crew reported its weapons system failing just as it prepared to attack the object.

The 1996 'ET de Varginha' humanoid sightings happened in which country?

Brazil's military inquiry concluded the 'creature' was a local man with a mental illness, nicknamed Mudinho, who sometimes crouched in the street.

The 1966 Westall UFO, seen by students at a high school, occurred in which Australian city?

Melbourne witnesses said a group of small planes chased the object, which darted about as if playing cat and mouse with them.

The 1967 Shag Harbour incident took place in which Canadian province?

Nova Scotia RCMP officers watched a light drift offshore, and navy divers then searched the seabed for days but reported finding nothing.

Kentucky pilot Thomas Mantell died in 1948 chasing what was most likely which kind of balloon?

Skyhook balloons were top secret in 1948, so Mantell couldn't have known what he was chasing when he climbed without oxygen and blacked out.

The Lubbock Lights of 1951 were first reported by professors from which institution?

Texas Technological College also had the case's photographer: freshman Carl Hart Jr. took pictures of a formation of the lights.

What did the Air Force blame for engines dying near a glowing object around Levelland, Texas in November 1957?

Farm workers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz made the first call, and the night-desk officer thought it was a joke.

The 1965 Kecksburg fireball, 'Pennsylvania's Roswell', was speculated to be debris from which Soviet craft?

Kosmos 96 was one theory, and in 2005 NASA told reporters that experts had judged the recovered fragments to be from a Soviet satellite.

The Cash-Landrum witnesses of December 1980 in Texas said the object was what shape?

Diamond-shaped was their description, and when the witnesses sued the U.S. government, a judge dismissed the case because no military helicopters could be proven.

At which Chicago airport did United employees report a saucer over Concourse C in November 2006?

O'Hare workers from pilots to mechanics saw it, but the FAA and United declined to investigate, and the FAA called it a weather phenomenon.

Area 51 was acquired in 1955 primarily to flight-test which aircraft?

Lockheed U-2 test flights, far higher than airliners then flew, set off a wave of UFO reports.

Which Nevada road near Area 51 is nicknamed the 'Extraterrestrial Highway'?

State Route 375 got its official nickname from Nevada in 1996, after years of UFO tales along the lonely road past the town of Rachel.

Bob Lazar claimed the craft he studied near Area 51 was fueled by which entry on the periodic table?

Element 115 was part of a story that fell apart, as investigators found Lazar's claimed physics education and employment history were fabricated.

The 2019 'Storm Area 51' Facebook joke spawned which gathering in the tiny Nevada town of Rachel?

Alienstock was planned with Rachel's Little A'Le'Inn, but joke creator Matty Roberts later broke with the inn and moved his own event to Las Vegas.

According to the hoax Majestic 12 documents, which president set up the secret committee?

Harry S. Truman, the papers claimed, ordered the committee to recover and study a flying saucer that had crashed near Roswell.

World War II pilots' term 'foo fighters' was borrowed from which comic strip?

Smokey Stover's firefighter hero often called himself a 'foo fighter', and a radar operator who read the strip passed the name to the mystery lights.

The 1946 'ghost rockets' were reported mainly over which region?

Scandinavia's sightings were widely blamed on Soviet tests of captured German V-1 or V-2 missiles, though no firm answer ever emerged.

A 1561 broadsheet woodcut by Hans Glaser depicts a 'celestial phenomenon' over which German city?

Nuremberg's woodcut, writer Jason Colavito says, became widely known after Carl Jung reprinted it in a 1958 flying-saucer book; skeptics suggest a sundog.

Which 11th-century Chinese polymath described a pearl-like flying object in his Dream Pool Essays?

Shen Kuo wrote that travellers at Fanliang moored their boats for nights hoping to see the object, and named a pavilion after the pearl.

The Pentagon's 'Tic Tac' video came from an F/A-18 pilot flying from which aircraft carrier in 2004?

USS Nimitz pilot David Fravor said that as he spiraled down toward the white object, it climbed to mirror his jet and then disappeared.

Which Senate leader got the Pentagon's secret UFO study program started?

Harry Reid got it going after talks with his longtime friend Robert Bigelow, whose aerospace company then received most of the money.

What is the name of the Pentagon's UFO investigation unit set up in 2022?

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office's 2024 history report found no evidence of alien technology and put most sightings down to misidentified ordinary objects.

Which Harvard astronomer launched the Galileo Project in 2021 to search for alien artifacts?

Avi Loeb had already co-written a 2018 study suggesting the interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua might be an alien light sail pushed by sunlight.

Britain's secret late-1990s UFO study for the Ministry of Defence was code-named what?

Project Condign concluded there was no evidence the objects seen were hostile or under any control other than that of natural physical forces.

In July 1952, radar blips and lights over which city sent Air Force jets racing to intercept?

Washington, D.C.'s radar blips and lights were attributed to temperature inversions, layers of warm air that can bend radar and light.

Which magazine ran 'Have We Visitors From Space?' in April 1952, in an issue with Marilyn Monroe on the cover?

Life: the piece quoted Walther Riedel, a rocket engineer who had worked on the V-2, saying he was convinced UFOs came from outer space.

Which grassroots UFO group was founded in Quincy, Illinois, in 1969?

MUFON began as the Midwest UFO Network, and as it spread beyond the Midwest it swapped 'Midwest' for 'Mutual', keeping the same acronym.

Which CBS anchor hosted the 1966 TV special 'UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?' with Carl Sagan?

Walter Cronkite hosted the hour-long CBS special, which told viewers there was still no valid scientific proof that spaceships had visited Earth.

Which Harvard psychiatrist became a leading advocate for alien 'experiencers' in the early 1990s?

John Mack risked his tenure when Harvard reviewed his abduction work, but the 14-month inquiry ended with him still a member in good standing.

Which phrase became the subtitle of the second X-Files film, released in 2008?

I Want to Believe: the year the film came out, the show's creators gave the Smithsonian a collection of X-Files props, including posters and FBI badges.

Which codename did the 1977 air force investigation of lights over the island of Colares carry?

Operação Prato sent air force officers to keep night watches over Colares after villagers blamed strange lights for marks on their skin.

What did the US Air Force's Project Twinkle, set up in 1949, investigate?

Green fireballs: the project's planned network of camera stations in New Mexico was never fully set up, and the project was dropped.

What did Doug Bower and Dave Chorley say they used to flatten their crop circles?

A wooden plank: Bower said he was inspired by a 1966 'saucer nest' found in reeds at Tully, Australia.

A 1973 survey found 95% of Americans had heard of UFOs, beating the 1977 recognition figure for which president?

Gerald Ford had his own UFO moment: in 1966, as a Michigan congressman, he called for a congressional investigation of sightings in his home state.