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.

Camille Bohannon

Camille Bohannon

Sacramento Bee article

The Roswell incident took place on Monday, July 7, 1947, when an airborne
object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Explanations of what
actually occurred are based on both official and unofficial reports.The most
popular theory of what took place is that the object, or UFO, was a spacecraft
containing extraterrestrial life. Since the late 1970s, the Roswell incident has
been the subject of much controversy, and conspiracy theories have arisen
about the event.

The U.S. government maintains that what was recovered near Roswell was
debris from the crash of an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon
belonging to what was then a classified top secret program named Mogul 
(see below).

MaJ. Jesse Mar­cel displays the Roswell balloon debris