Roswell incident

1947NotableContested

Debris found on a New Mexico ranch becomes the world's most famous UFO story.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → French Revolution → Revolutions of 1848 → German unification → World War I → Treaty of Versailles → Great Depression → Nazis take power → World War II → Atomic bomb → Cold War begins → Roswell incident

Contested history

Consensus: In 1947 debris was recovered on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.

Debris from Project Mogul, a secret balloon for detecting Soviet nuclear testsEstablished

The U.S. Air Force's 1994 report explained it.

The military initially said 'flying disc,' then covered upEstablished

The first press release did say that, which fueled later theories.

A crashed alien spacecraft with bodiesUnsupported

No physical evidence has been produced.

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AARO Historical Record Report, Vol. 1 (2024) ↗