| |
KF5JRV > TODAY 24.06.19 14:04l 6 Lines 2763 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 9130_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jun 24
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<OK0NBR<OK2PEN<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 190624/1202Z 9130@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQK6.0.18
On this day in 1997, U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page reportdismissing 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 toflourish in the 1940s, when developments in space travel and the dawn ofthe atomic age caused many Americans to turn their attention to theskies. The town of Roswell, located near the Pecos River in southeasternNew Mexico, became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange eventsof early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a strange,shiny material scattered over some of his land. He turned the materialover to the sheriff, who passed it on to authorities at the nearby AirForce base. On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recoveredthe wreckage of a “flying disk.ö A local newspaper put the story on itsfront page, launching Roswell into the spotlight of the public’s UFOfascination.The Air Force soon took back their story, however, saying the debris hadbeen merely a downed weather balloon. Aside from die-hard UFO believers,or “ufologists,ö public interest in the so-called “Roswell Incidentöfaded until the late 1970s, when claims surfaced that the military hadinvented the weather balloon story as a cover-up. Believers in thistheory argued that officials had in fact retrieved several alien bodiesfrom the crashed spacecraft, which were now stored in the mysteriousArea 51 installation in Nevada. Seeking to dispel these suspicions, theAir Force issued a 1,000-page report in 1994 stating that the crashedobject was actually a high-altitude weather balloon launched from anearby missile test-site as part of a classified experiment aimed atmonitoring the atmosphere in order to detect Soviet nuclear tests.On July 24, 1997, barely a week before the extravagant 50th anniversarycelebration of the incident, the Air Force released yet another reporton the controversial subject. Titled “The Roswell Report, Case Closed,öthe document stated definitively that there was no Pentagon evidencethat any kind of life form was found in the Roswell area in connectionwith the reported UFO sightings, and that the “bodiesö recovered werenot aliens but dummies used in parachute tests conducted in the region.Any hopes that this would put an end to the cover-up debate were invain, as furious ufologists rushed to point out the report’sinconsistencies. With conspiracy theories still alive and well on theInternet, Roswell continues to thrive as a tourist destination for UFOenthusiasts far and wide, hosting the annual UFO Encounter Festival eachJuly and welcoming visitors year-round to its International UFO Museumand Research Center.
73, Scott kf5jrv
KF5JRV @ KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
