On this day in 1997, U.S. Air Force officials released a 231-page report
dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell,
New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Public interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, began to flourish
in the 1940s, when developments in space travel and the dawn of the
atomic age caused many Americans to turn their attention to the skies.

The town of Roswell, located near the Pecos River in southeastern New
Mexico, became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange events
of early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a strange,
shiny material scattered over some of his land. He turned the material
over to the sheriff, who passed it on to authorities at the nearby Air Force
base.

On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recovered the wreckage
of a “flying disk.” A local newspaper (below) put the story on its front page,
launching Roswell into the spotlight of the public’s UFO fascination.