Roswell UFO incident
In mid 1947, a United States Air Force surveillance balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, prompting claims alleging the crash was of an extraterrestrial spaceship.
After an initial spike of interest, the military reported that the crash was merely of a conventional weather balloon. Interest subsequently waned until the late 1970s when ufologists began promulgating a variety of increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, claiming that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed, and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military who then engaged in a cover-up.
In the 1990s, the US military published reports disclosing the true nature of the crashed Project Mogul balloon. Nevertheless, the Roswell incident continues to be of interest in popular media, and conspiracy theories surrounding the event persist. Roswell has been called "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".
Events of 1947
