The Roswell incident centers on the recovery, in 1947, of mundane metallic and rubber debris

The Roswell incident centers on the recovery, in 1947, of mundane metallic and rubber debris from a military balloon that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. Decades later, conspiracy theories began claiming that the debris was from a flying saucer and that the truth had been covered up by the United States government. On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc". The Army quickly retracted the statement and said instead that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. In 1994, the United States Air Force published a report identifying the crashed object as a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.

The Roswell incident was not widely discussed until the late 1970s, when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel, in an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, said he believed the debris he retrieved was extraterrestrial. Ufologists began promoting a variety of increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, claiming that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military, which then engaged in a cover-up.

Conspiracy theories about the event persist, and the Roswell incident continues to be of interest in popular media. The incident has been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".

The city of Roswell, New Mexico has capitalized on the event; the city's official seal now features a little green man while the city contains countless ufology attractions, events, statues and iconography.

EVENTS OF JULY 1947
The Roswell incident occurred amid the flying saucer craze of 1947. On June 26, media nationwide had reported civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold's story of seeing what became known as "Flying Saucers". Historians would later chronicle over 800 "copycat" sightings that were reported after the Arnold story was published.

On Saturday night, July 5, 1947, rancher W.W. "Mac" Brazel made a trip from his remote ranch to town, Corona, New Mexico. The ranch had no phone and no radio, leaving Brazel unaware of the flying saucer craze of the prior ten days.

As a result, it was not until Saturday night that Brazel connected debris he'd found three weeks earlier with the flying disks in the news. The debris – tinfoil, rubber, and thin wooden beams – had been scattered across a square mile of the ranch. Brazel previously had gathered it and pushed it under some brush to dispose of it.

When Brazel heard stories of silvery flying discs that Saturday night in Corona, he decided to gather up his prior find. On Sunday, July 6, Brazel dug out the debris and on Monday, July 7, he took it in to the sheriff's office in Roswell. The sheriff called Roswell Army Air Field, which assigned the matter to Major Jesse Marcel. Brazel took Marcel back to the debris site, and the two gathered up more pieces of rubber and tinfoil. Marcel took the material home on Monday night.

On Tuesday morning, July 8, Marcel took the material to his base commander, Colonel William Blanchard. Blanchard reported the finding to General Roger Ramey at Fort Worth Army Air Field (FWAAF). General Ramey ordered the material flown to FWAAF immediately. Marcel boarded a B-29 Superfortress and made the flight to FWAAF.

On July 8, 1947, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had landed on a ranch near Roswell.

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident

TAGS: Roswell incident, Hoaxes in the United States, Conspiracy theories in the United States, Conspiracy theories by subject, Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1947, July 1947 events in the United States, 1947 in New Mexico, 1947 in military history, Roswell incident

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