On June 24, 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 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 put the story on
its front page, launching Roswell into the spotlight of the public’s
UFO fascination.
Roswell base intel officer Major Jesse Marcel (above) has claimed he was forced to pose before reporters with the
weather-balloon debris he did not witness at the Roswell
UFO crash site.
