Timeline of UFO investigations and public disclosure
This is a timeline of civilian and governmental efforts in investigating and disclosing the nature and presence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). It includes important publications and public events and also institutional countermeasures against the UFO disclosure process.
20th century
[edit]- 1950 - American aviator Donald Keyhoe published the book The Flying Saucers Are Real.[1]
- 1950 - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence organized the Flying Saucer Working Party, an investigative committee for UFOs. They released a report in the following year which attributed UFO sightings to misidentifications, hoaxes or delusions.[2]
- 1952 - The United States Air Force started Project Blue Book, which was headquartered at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
- 1962 - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence started the UFO desk, a telephone hotline for collecting UFO sighting reports.[3]
- 1969 - Release of the Condon report.[4]
- 1969 - The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) was established by Allen R. Utke, Walter H. Andrus Jr., John F. Schuessler, and others.[5]
- 1973 - The Center for UFO Studies was founded by American astronomer J. Allen Hynek.
- 1973 - The governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter filed an UFO report with MUFON from his personal experience.
- 1975 - Jacques Vallee published his book The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influences on the Human Race.
- 1977 - The French Space Agency formed the research unit GEPAN, later renamed to GEIPAN (French: Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés) for the investigation of the UFO phenomena. The first director of the unit was Claude Poher.[6]
- 1987 - Timothy Good published his book Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-Up.[7]
- 1994 - Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack published his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.
- 1996 - The Varginha UFO incident occured in Brazil, receiving extensive media coverage.[8]
2000s
[edit]- 2007 - The Chicago Tribune reported the 2006 O'Hare International Airport UFO sighting, causing widespread public attention.[9][10]
- 2007 - The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was established by the United States Department of Defense. The information was only made public in 2017.
- 2008 - Robert L. Hastings published the first edition of his work UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.
- 2009 December - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence closed its UFO desk.[11]
2010s
[edit]- 2010 January - Richard M. Dolan and Bryce Zabel published their book A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact.
- 2010 August - Leslie Kean pubslished her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.
- 2010 September - A press conference involving first-hand UFO witnesses was organized by Leslie Kean and others at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C..[12]
- 2012 July - Michael D. Swords and Robert Powell published the book UFOs and Governments: A Historical Inquiry.
- 2015 January - John Greenewald Jr. released over 130,000 pages of declassified United States Air Force documents relating to UFOs.[13]
- 2017 - The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies was founded.[14]
- 2017 October - To the Stars Academy was founded by Jim Semivan, Harold E. Puthoff, and Tom DeLonge.[15]
- 2017 December - The New York Times pubslished an article written by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper in the front page of to expose the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.[16]
- 2019 February - Religious scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka published her book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.
- 2019 May - The History Channel aired the first season of its documentary series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, featuring Lue Elizondo as a main narrator and Tom DeLonge as one of the producers.
2020 - 2025
[edit]- 2020 April - Andrew McGrillen started That UFO Podcast on YouTube.[17]
- 2020 August - The United States Department of Defense announced the establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The move also called for the use of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena instead of UFOs.[18][19]
- 2020 October - James Fox released the documentary film The Phenomenon.
- 2021 May - The International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER) was launched.[20]
- 2021 June - The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force released the report titled Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.[21]
- 2021 October - Australian journalist Ross Coulthart published his book In Plain Sight: A fascinating investigation into UFOs and impossible science.
- 2022 March - The Canadian government released 500 pages of UFO sightings report for the past 20 years.[22]
- 2022 May - United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held the first public hearing on UFOs in 50 years. Scott Bray and Ronald Moultrie testified in the hearing.
- 2022 July - The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense. Sean M. Kirkpatrick was named its first director.
- 2022 September - The Canadian Office of the Chief Science Advisor launched the Sky Canada Project.[23]
- 2022 December - The United States Department of Defense suggested to change the name of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to account for unidentified submerged objects and trans-medium objects.[24]
- 2023 January - The National Geographic channel aired the docuseries UFOs: Investigating the Unknown.[25]
- 2023 June - American former intelligence officer and whistleblower David Grusch was interviewed by Ross Coulthart on NewsNation, where he claimed the existence of decades-long crash retrieval and reverse engineering program organized by the U.S. federal government.
- 2023 July - A congressional hearing on UAP was organized where David Fravor, Ryan Graves, and David Grusch testified their claims.[26]
- 2023 November - American journalist Garrett Graff published his book UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There.
- 2024 January - Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies from the Society for UAP Studies published its first issue.
- 2024 March - AARO released the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, stating that no verifiable evidence that UAP sightings represented extraterrestrial activities.[27]
- 2024 August - Luis Elizondo published his memoir Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.
- 2024 October - The first Global Disclosure Day event was launched by the New Paradigm Institute.[28]
- 2024 November - Subcommittees of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing under the title Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth. The experts who testified include Timothy Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger, and Mike Gold.[29]
See also
[edit]- Investigation of UFO reports by the United States government
- List of investigations of UFOs by governments
- UFO conspiracy theories
References
[edit]- ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Flying Saucers are Real, by Donald E. Keyhoe". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "My time as a UFO investigator for the government". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Meier, Allison (2017-11-13). "Declassified Drawings from the British Government's UFO Desk". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Boffey, Philip M. (1969-01-17). "UFO Study: Condon Group Finds No Evidence of Visits from Outer Space". Science. 163 (3864): 260–262. Bibcode:1969Sci...163..260B. doi:10.1126/science.163.3864.260. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17790249.
- ^ "A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUFON". MUFON.
- ^ "GEIPAN - A body to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena".
- ^ Timothy Good (1988). Above Top Secret: the Worldwide UFO Cover-Up.
- ^ "Tale of Stinky Extraterrestrials Stirs Up UFO Crowd in Brazil". The Wall Street Journal. 1996.
- ^ Hilkevitch, Jon (2007-01-07). "THEY'RE HERE!". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Vintage Chicago Tribune: 'Close encounters' with UFOs in Illinois!!!!!". Chicago Tribune. 2022-05-12. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "UFO sightings: Files explain why MoD closed down special desk". BBC News. 2013-06-20. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Aliens land ... in the headlines". NBC News. 2010-09-27. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "UFO enthusiast releases 130K pages of Air Force docs on UFOs to the web | abc7chicago.com". abc7chicago.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies". Crunchbase.
- ^ "To The Stars Academy Of Arts & Science Launches Today". markets.businessinsider.com.
- ^ "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program - The New York Times". The New York Times. 7 March 2023. Archived from the original on 2023-03-07.
- ^ "That UFO Podcast". That UFO Podcast. 17 April 2023.
- ^ "Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force". U.S. Department of Defense.
- ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Eghigian, Greg. "UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Research (ICER), International Coalition for Extraterrestrial. "New Global Organization Launches International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER)". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena". www.dni.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Here Are 20 Years of UFO Sightings We Got From the Canadian Government". VICE. 2022-03-01. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "What is the Sky Canada Project and its importance? - New Space Economy". newspaceeconomy.ca. 2024-09-27. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ Vincent, Brandi (2022-12-20). "Pentagon changes 'UAP' terminology as it looks to investigate unexplainable sightings across all domains". DefenseScoop. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ UFOs: Investigating the Unknown (Documentary), Leslie Kean, Chris Mellon, Robert Powell, 2023-01-17, retrieved 2024-11-14
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ "U.S. recovered non-human 'biologics' from UFO crash sites, former intel official says". NPR. 2023-07-27.
- ^ "DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology". U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
- ^ "Global Disclosure Day – New Paradigm Institute". newparadigminstitute.org.
- ^ "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth". United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. 2024-11-19. Retrieved 2024-11-14.