On this day in 1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Following wide initial interest in the crashed "flying disc", the US military stated that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. Interest subsequently waned until the late 1970s, when Ufologists began
promoting 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, which then engaged in a cover-
up.
In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature
of the crashed object: a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.
Roswell Army Air Field Intelligence Officer Jesse Marcel, sr. holding
foil debris from Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash site.