The Vault
Contested history, UFO files and government secrets. Go as deep as you want. The consensus always comes first, then every serious alternative, each labeled by the evidence: established, debated, speculation, unsupported or debunked.
UFOs and UAP
From the first flying saucer headlines to the Pentagon's 2024 report: what was seen, what was investigated, and what the files say.
Kenneth Arnold sighting
On 24 June 1947 pilot Kenneth Arnold reports nine fast, shining objects near Mount Rainier. Newspaper coverage coins the phrase "flying saucer" and starts a wave of…
Roswell incident
In 1947 debris was recovered on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.
Washington, D.C. UFO sightings
On two weekends in July 1952, radar operators and pilots report unidentified objects over the capital. The Air Force attributes them to temperature inversions and…
Project Blue Book
The U.S. Air Force's study of UFO reports runs from 1952 to 1969. It logs 12,618 reports and leaves 701 unidentified. Its files are now public at the National Archives.
Robertson Panel
A CIA-sponsored panel of scientists finds no threat in UFO reports and recommends a public education campaign to reduce interest in them, fueling later suspicion of a…
Area 51
Area 51 is a real Air Force test site used for secret aircraft such as the U-2, the A-12 and early stealth planes. CIA documents released in 2013 confirmed its role in…
Condon Report
A University of Colorado study concludes that further scientific study of UFOs is unlikely to be worthwhile. Project Blue Book closes in December 1969.
Rendlesham Forest incident
Over two nights in December 1980 U.S. Air Force personnel near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk reported unexplained lights in Rendlesham Forest.
Phoenix Lights
There were two events: a V-shaped pattern of lights moving across the state around 8:30 p.m., and stationary lights near Phoenix around 10 p.m. The military says the…
USS Nimitz "Tic Tac" encounter
Experienced pilots and radar operators reported an object they could not identify. The Navy has never publicly explained it, and the full radar data has not been…
Pentagon UFO program revealed
In December 2017 The New York Times reveals AATIP, a secret Pentagon program that studied UFO reports from 2007 to 2012 with about $22 million in funding.
Pentagon releases Navy UAP videos
In April 2020 the Defense Department officially releases three Navy cockpit videos, known as FLIR1, Gimbal and GoFast, that had already leaked.
U.S. intelligence UAP assessment
A June 2021 preliminary assessment reviews 144 military reports from 2004 to 2021 and explains only one, a deflating balloon. It calls for better data collection.
David Grusch testifies to Congress
Grusch testified under oath that other officials told him about crash-retrieval programs. He has said he did not see craft himself. The Defense Department and its UAP…
AARO Historical Record Report
In March 2024 the Pentagon's UAP office reports it found no evidence that the U.S. government has ever recovered extraterrestrial technology, and traces many claims to…
Government secrets, exposed and alleged
Some of these were proven by the government's own documents. Others remain claims. Each is labeled by how well the evidence supports it.
Operation Paperclip
After World War II the U.S. brought more than 1,500 German scientists and technicians to America under Project Paperclip.
MKUltra
From 1953 to 1973 the CIA ran secret experiments on mind control, including dosing people with LSD, some without consent.
Project Mockingbird
Project Mockingbird was a 1963 CIA wiretap of two syndicated columnists, disclosed in the agency's Family Jewels documents.
COINTELPRO
From 1956 to 1971 the FBI secretly surveils and disrupts civil rights, antiwar and other political groups. It is exposed after activists take files from an FBI office…
Operation Northwoods
In 1962 the Joint Chiefs proposed staging fake attacks to justify an invasion of Cuba.
Gulf of Tonkin incident
Congress authorized war after reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers in August 1964.
Stargate remote-viewing program
From 1972 to 1995 U.S. intelligence agencies funded research and operations using psychic remote viewing, later known as Stargate.
Tuskegee syphilis study begins
From 1932 to 1972, U.S. health officials studied untreated syphilis in hundreds of Black men without informed consent, even after penicillin became standard treatment.
Church Committee
A Senate investigation exposes intelligence abuses, including COINTELPRO, MKUltra and CIA assassination plots, and leads to new oversight laws such as FISA in 1978.
Iran-Contra affair
Reagan administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran and diverted proceeds to Nicaraguan Contra rebels despite a congressional ban.
Reichstag fire
Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was caught at the scene and executed; the Nazis used the fire to suspend civil liberties.
Pearl Harbor
Japan's surprise attack on 7 December 1941 killed about 2,400 Americans.
Watergate
A burglary at Democratic headquarters and the White House cover-up led to Nixon's resignation.
Iraq War
The U.S. and allies invaded Iraq in 2003, citing weapons of mass destruction.
Snowden revelations
In 2013 Edward Snowden leaked documents on U.S. and allied surveillance.
Vanished, unsolved and unexplained
Disappearances, strange deaths and puzzles that investigators still argue over.
Princes in the Tower vanish
Edward V and Richard of York were last seen in the Tower of London in 1483 and were never seen alive again.
Lost Colony of Roanoke
The 1587 English colony on Roanoke Island had vanished by 1590, leaving the word CROATOAN carved on a post.
Death of Napoleon
Napoleon died on Saint Helena in May 1821, and his autopsy found a large stomach ulcer with signs of cancer.
Kaspar Hauser appears in Nuremberg
Kaspar Hauser appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 claiming a lifetime of captivity and died of a stab wound in 1833.
Tunguska event
On 30 June 1908 a cosmic body exploded several kilometers above Siberia and flattened about 2,000 square kilometers of forest.
Execution of the Romanovs
Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children were shot by Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.
Amelia Earhart disappears
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared on 2 July 1937 while trying to reach Howland Island in the Pacific.
Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle
On 5 December 1945 five Navy Avenger bombers on a training flight got lost off Florida, and a PBM Mariner sent to search for them was also lost.
Philadelphia Experiment story begins
Claims that the Navy made the destroyer escort USS Eldridge invisible or teleported it in 1943 first surfaced in letters to Morris Jessup in 1956.
Dyatlov Pass incident
In February 1959 nine Soviet hikers died after cutting their way out of their tent on Kholat Syakhl in the northern Urals.
D. B. Cooper hijacking
On 24 November 1971 a man called Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient jet, took a $200,000 ransom and parachuted out over Washington State.
Artifacts that keep people arguing
Objects and documents whose origins or meaning are disputed.
Voynich manuscript
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated 15th-century codex in an unknown script that no one has convincingly deciphered.
Piri Reis map
The Piri Reis map of 1513 is an Ottoman world map compiled from older sources, including a lost chart attributed to Columbus.
Donnelly revives Atlantis
Atlantis comes from Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BCE, and no archaeological evidence for it has been found.
Kensington Runestone found
The Kensington Runestone, found on a Minnesota farm in 1898, bears a runic inscription dated 1362.
Shroud of Turin carbon-dated
In 1988 laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona radiocarbon-dated the Shroud of Turin to 1260 to 1390 CE.
Assassinations and attacks
JFK assassinated
President Kennedy was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and then killed two days later.
Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated
James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in 1969 and recanted days later. A 1999 civil jury in Memphis (King v. Jowers) found that King was the victim of a conspiracy. A 2000…
September 11 attacks
Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers attacked the U.S., killing nearly 3,000 people.
Ancient mysteries
Lost civilizations, monuments and machines that keep people arguing.
Younger Dryas cold snap
A sudden cold snap about 12,900 years ago, most likely caused by meltwater disrupting Atlantic ocean currents.
Göbekli Tepe
Built by hunter-gatherers around 9500 BCE, likely as a ritual or feasting center.
Great Pyramid of Giza
Built around 2560 BCE for the pharaoh Khufu by a large, organized Egyptian workforce.
Stonehenge
A monument built in stages from about 3000 to 1500 BCE, aligned with the solstices and used for ceremonies and burials.
Nazca Lines
The Nazca people made the lines by removing dark stones to reveal lighter ground, likely for ritual walking and water ceremonies.
Antikythera mechanism
A Greek astronomical calculator from about the 2nd to 1st century BCE, found in a shipwreck in 1901.
Plato's Academy
Plato founded the Academy and wrote dialogues that shaped Western philosophy. In two dialogues he describes Atlantis.
Library of Alexandria
The Library declined over centuries rather than burning in a single fire.
Late Bronze Age collapse
Around 1177 BCE, many eastern Mediterranean civilizations collapsed within decades.
Origins and identities
Who did it, who wrote it, and where we came from.
Homo sapiens appears
Modern humans evolved in Africa and spread outward, mixing with Neanderthals and Denisovans along the way.
Complex language
Language evolved at some point in the human lineage, but when is hard to pin down because speech leaves no fossils.
Dogs domesticated
Dogs descend from Ice Age wolves; they were the first domesticated animal.
Humans reach the Americas
People crossed from Siberia into the Americas during or before the last Ice Age.
Xia dynasty (traditional)
Ancient Chinese histories describe a Xia dynasty before the Shang, but no Xia writing has been found.
Hebrew Bible and monotheism
The Hebrew Bible was compiled from older traditions, mostly between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE.
Trojan War (legendary)
Troy was a real city in Anatolia (Hisarlik), destroyed several times; the Iliad blends memory and myth.
Jesus of Nazareth crucified
Almost all historians agree Jesus was a real Jewish preacher executed by the Romans.
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays, likely with collaborators on some.
Satoshi Nakamoto creates Bitcoin
Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Satoshi wrote only online, stopped posting in 2011, and the roughly one million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi's early mining have…
Collapses and catastrophes
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
The Western Empire collapsed through a long mix of internal and external pressures.
Classic Maya collapse
Maya cities in the southern lowlands were largely abandoned between about 800 and 950, though Maya people and cities elsewhere continued.
Black Death
Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, confirmed by DNA from plague victims' teeth.
Titanic sinks
The Titanic struck an iceberg on 14 April 1912 and sank within three hours.
COVID-19 pandemic
SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. How it first infected people remains unresolved.
Modern disputes
Moon landing
Twelve astronauts walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972.
Ordinal Theory and inscriptions
Inscriptions are valid under Bitcoin's consensus rules and have paid substantial fees to miners. Whether nodes should relay them is one of the most heated arguments in…
More contested history
Declassified archives
Primary sources straight from the agencies. Anyone can link documents from these collections to any event.
Know a case that belongs here?
Members with reputation and supporters can propose new events, and anyone can add notes and sources to these pages.