AUGUST 31st

1895 August 31 — 8:00 p.m. Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer James Murray watches a “brilliant luminous body” move slowly over the Oxford University campus toward the east. At roughly the same time, other observers in London see a similar meteor pass over slowly for about 5 minutes, and A. Warren Melhuish sees it at Margate, Kent, around 10:15 p.m.

1950 August 31 — 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. After V-2 missile launch no. 51 at Holloman AFB, Project Twinkle cinetheodolite crews track and film multiple objects sporadically several times from different directions at very high speeds over the course of 3 hours. Cinetheodolite station P-5 films an object using a one-frame-per-second 60 cm focal length camera with 35 mm color film. Frames 593 and 595 (2 seconds of nearly 10 minutes of film) show its elevation angle changing. An attempted interception by four F-86 jets from Kirtland AFB for one hour fails to locate the objects, which apparently return after the jets leave. Cinetheodolite observers note an object with definite shape and 3D depth but indistinct edges and no smoke or trail. The object seems to “rock or oscillate.” It is lost when the observer looks away to get an angle reading. http://www.nicap.org/500831holloman_dir.htm.

1951 August 31 — 12:45 p.m. Mrs. Tom Tilson and one or two other women are driving north on Hwy 70 near Matador, Texas, when they see to the west a pear-shaped object the length of a B-29 fuselage (100 feet). It is aluminum or silver-yellow with a port or some type of aperture on the side, and it moves with its smaller end forward, drifting slowly at about 150 feet altitude. It then shoots up in a circular fashion and out of sight after a few seconds.

1953 August 31 — Edward J. Ruppelt leaves Project Blue Book permanently, leaving Max Futch in charge as acting chief through December.

1954 August 31— 7:10 p.m. RAN Lieutenant J. A. “Shamus” O’Farrell is returning to HMAS Albatross Naval Air Station near Nowra, New South Wales, after a night cross-country in a Hawker Sea Fury aircraft. After contacting Nowra, O’Farrell sees a very bright light closing fast at one o’clock. It crosses in front of his aircraft, taking up position on his port beam, where it appears to orbit. A second and similar light is observed at nine o’clock. It passes about a mile in front of the Sea Fury and then turns in the position where the first light was observed. According to O’Farrell, the apparent crossing speeds of the lights are the fastest he has ever encountered. He has been flying at 250 mph. O’Farrell contacts Albatross, which in turn confirms that it has two radar “paints” in company with him. Radar operator Petty Officer Keith Jessop confirms the presence of 2 objects near the Sea Fury on the GCI remote display. The two lights reform at nine o’clock and then disappear on a northeasterly heading. O’Farrell can only make out “a vague shape with the white light situated centrally on top.” The Directorate of Naval Intelligence at the time writes that O’Farrell is “an entirely credible witness” and that he “was visibly shaken by his experience but remains adamant that he saw these objects.” News of the incident leaks out in December, but the official RAN file remains classified until 1982. http://www.nicap.org/540831nowra_dir.htm ; http://australiandisclosureproject.blogspot.com/2006/04/sea-fury-incident-date-august-31-1954.html ; http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/sea_fury_1954.htm

1957 August 31 — Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) sends a letter to a constituent about UFOs, saying, “I, frankly, feel that there is a great deal to this.”

1960 August 31 — Rep. Leonard G. Wolf (D-Iowa) makes a statement in the House on NICAP’s “Dangers of Secrecy on UFOs” report, saying that it is “imperative to end the risk of accidental war from defense forces’ confusion over UFOs.” He mentions NICAP board member Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter’s request that “Congress inform the public as to the facts.” Based on a three-year NICAP study, Wolf states that all defense personnel “should be told that the UFOs are real and should be trained to distinguish them—by their characteristic speeds and maneuvers—from conventional planes and missiles…. The American people must be convinced, by documented facts, that the UFOs could not be Soviet machines.” http://www.nicap.org/NICAP_in_BB_files/nicap_&_86th_congress.htm

1966 August 31 — Col. Ivan C. Atkinson, deputy executive director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, formally approaches the University of Colorado with a request to conduct a comprehensive and independent examination of the UFO problem.

1969 August 31 — Day. An RAAF Canberra bomber chases but fails to catch a UFO over northern New South Wales. The plane is dispatched from RAAF Base Amberley near Ipswich, Queensland, after hundreds of people in Kygole and along the Darling Downs report the object, which is shaped like an aluminum Zeppelin. Some witnesses observe the object for 3 hours as it hovers above towns and farms. The UFO speeds away when the Canberra tries to close in on it.

1977 August 31 — 12:30–3:15 a.m. A total of seven witnesses see a lighted cylindrical object at the top of a disused quarry on the road between Sturno and Frigento, Avellino, Italy. Near the object is an entity about 7 feet 10 inches tall. It has two red-orange lights in a spot where its eyes might be and is wearing metallic-looking coveralls, a possible helmet, a metallic belt, and a black box on its arm. At one point the entity shines a bright beam of light at them. The duration of the sighting is due to the original two witnesses going back and forth to a nearby village to collect additional observers. A triangle of depressions is found that indicates something as heavy as 40 tons has landed there. Some of the witnesses are regressed hypnotically and recall the same narrative.

1986 August 31 — 2:30 a.m. A man is driving home when his car engine stops in Manzuno, Italy. He gets out to find out what happened, hears a sharp whistle and dogs barking, and sees two bright lights. The objects descend and remain visible for more than 15 minutes. He sees their shape as rectangular with a luminous trail. The engine comes back on as the objects disappear.

1987 August 31 — 10:55 p.m. A dark, domed, disc-shaped UFO with a mast or antenna on top comes down quickly over the high-security Naval Submarine Base Bangor [now Naval Base Kitsap] on the Kitsap Peninsula, Washington, which houses the Trident nuclear ballistic submarine fleet. It hovers over a playground. Randy Springsteen, 8, and Dennis Mauer, 10, sons of military personnel, are sitting on the swings and see an entity with a big head, big pointed “cat” ears, wrinkled skin, and a greenish complexion in an open hatch. It has a thin, spindly body, long webbed fingers and toes, and tabs or suction cups on the ends of its fingers and toes. It also has a wrinkled mouth “like an old grandma’s.” The boys estimate the being is about 6 feet tall. It points a device that directed a beam of energy at the two boys on the swings, causing the levitation of the metal swings. The boys flee quickly into the Springsteen home and get Charlene Springsteen, who sees a row of lights in the sky as the UFO takes off and flies away. Charlene then has the boys draw separate sketches of both the UFO and the alien, which are remarkably similar.

AUGUST 30th

1892 August 30 — 11:00 p.m. Several people in Waxahachie, Texas, see a “kind of balloon” with colored lights passing over the northern part of the city after hearing a man shouting a greeting.

1950 August 30 — 10:45 a.m. During a Bell Aircraft MX-776 Shrike missile test (for the later Rascal air-to-ground strategic missile) a USAF M/Sgt and eight Bell Aircraft employees at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, see two glaringly bright circular or elliptical objects maintaining relative position to each other following the B-50 Superfortress launch aircraft from above on both the dry run and hot run prior to missile release. The objects give a “strong glare at all times” (not reflected sunlight), manoeuvre at high estimated speeds up to 10 times the B-50 (roughly 2,500 mph) for short distances, leave no vapor trails, hover, accelerate rapidly, and make abrupt “square” turns with apparent size changing to indicate ascent and descent. (This may be the same incident as the March 14, 1951, case of a “swirl” of multiple objects.) http://www.nicap.org/500830holloman_dir.htm

1951 August 30 — 11:30 p.m. A Texas Tech freshman named Carl Hart Jr. sees the same formation of 18–20 lights over Lubbock and takes five photos. He gets the roll of film developed the next day and takes it to the Lubbock Morning Avalanche, which puts them out on the Associated Press wire. ATIC examines the photos and notes that the “two rows of spots behaved differently. One row only shows slight variation from a precise V formation throughout, whereas the other now appears to pass from above the first row, through it to a position below.” Biologist James Cecil Cross looks at the Lubbock photos under a microscope and rules out the bird explanation. See also Life, Apr. 7, 1952. While investigating the Lubbock Lights, Ruppelt also learns that several people in and around Lubbock claim to have seen a “flying wing” moving over the city. Among the witnesses is the wife of Dr. Ducker, who reports that in August 1951 she observed a “huge, soundless flying wing” pass over her house. Ruppelt knows that USAF does possess a “flying wing” jet bomber, and he feels that at least some of the sightings are caused by the bomber, although he cannot explain why, according to the witnesses, the wing makes no sound as it flies overhead. Ruppelt says that in addition to Project Grudge investigators, another group of people who, “because of their association with the government, had complete access to our files” (scientists convinced of the
ETH) were also looking into the Lubbock cases. In March 1955, Ducker sends Ruppelt a telegram indicating that he has figured out that the lights are a “natural phenomenon” and requests no further publicity in his book. However, Texas Tech mathematics professor Ralph Sylvester Underwood has also observed three flights and estimates the objects are at 2,000 feet altitude and flying at 700 mph—much too fast for birds. http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=329 ; http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/07/can-we-learn-anything-from-ufo-photos_15.html ; http://www.nicap.org/510825lubbock_dir.htm ; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=152

1956 August 30 — Day. Two RAF Gloster Javelin interceptors, one piloted by E. H. “Wilbur” Wright, are flying west over the English Channel south of the Isle of Wight when one of the navigators obtains a radar return at 19 miles distance (later calculations indicate it has a diameter of 600 feet). The pilots get permission to abandon their test exercise and investigate the object. Wright turns north toward the object on his right wing, but it has apparently slowed down and is maintaining its position. The second Javelin pilot has caught up from behind and confirms radar and visual sightings. The two aircraft bank steeply so the object is at 15 miles dead ahead on the radar screen They close the distance to 10 miles and see that the object has a metallic gray appearance. At 8 miles distance, the object suddenly climbs vertically too fast for radar to track (estimated at 18,000 mph) and vanishes. After landing at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, the crews are told that ground radar at RAF Sopley [now closed] has tracked the object. They are ordered not to speak about the event.

1957 August 30 — Night. A Capital Airlines pilot is flying a Viscount at 12,000 feet approaching Norfolk, Virginia, with a Northeast Airlines DC-6 directly above on the same heading at 20,000 feet. The Viscount pilot sees a brilliant object that “flew fast and then abruptly halted 20 miles in front of us at 60,000 feet altitude.” The Northeast pilot tries to acquire the object on radar. With the antenna at 0° elevation, nothing is detected, but with the antenna elevated to 15° he acquires “an excellent blip right where I told him to look for the object.” According to the Viscount pilot, the object “dissolved right in front of my eyes, and the crew above lost it from the scope at the same time. They said it just faded away.” The entire incident lasts several minutes. http://www.nicap.org/570830chesapeake_dir.htm

1962 August 30 — 7:35–7:55 p.m. While having supper at an outdoor restaurant near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, three men, one of whom works for Techint Engineering Company, watch a UFO that approaches and hovers for 20 minutes. The engineer has a portable theodolite with him, and they set it up and track the object. It is a silvery-gray disc, like two rounded hubcaps together, and is spinning on its axis. It has an antenna on the top and exhaust ports all around its mid-line, and it is surrounded by gaseous emissions that run through all the colors of the spectrum. The object flips to a vertical alignment, showing its base, and then tips over so that its original topside is on the bottom. The object silently accelerates and disappears in 5 seconds. Project Blue Book concludes that the men were watching the planet Venus. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1962-July-Dec.pdf

1965 August 30 — Hynek writes to Lt. Col. John Spaulding in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to suggest that the Pentagon work with the National Academy of Sciences to establish a panel of physical and social scientists to study the UFO phenomenon.

1969 August 30 — Afternoon. Future ufologist Bill Chalker, 17, is relaxing on a surfboard in the middle of the Clarence River in Grafton, New South Wales. He notices streams of fine filament coming down out of the sky over the river. He collects some samples, seeing no spiders, but the material dissipates into nothing. He later learns that other people, including his parents, watched an elongated white UFO moving at right angles to the filament fall.

1978 August 30 — 11:00 p.m.–midnight. A 38-year-old man is driving a pickup on State Highway 38 a half mile west of Nisula, Michigan, when a cone-shaped object flies toward him from the east. It has two steady red lights at the ends and one steady white light in the middle. It flies low and silently over the truck, which then stalls for one second. He gets home and he and his wife watch the red lights in the distance, still moving slowly up and down from east to south.

1987 August 30 — William S. Steinman makes another attempt to contact possible crashed-saucer insider Eric A. Walker, whom Robert Sarbacher has indicated was a behind-the-scenes participant. Steinman calls Walker, saying he is inquiring about “meetings that you attended at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in/around 1949–1950, concerning the military recovery of flying saucers, and bodies of occupants.” Walker replies: “Yes, I attended meetings concerning that subject matter.” Walker agrees they are talking about recovered aliens and seems nonchalant about the subject. Walker adds: “Yes, I know of MJ-12. I have known of them for 40 years… You are delving into an area that you can do absolutely nothing about… Forget about it!” Walker tells Steinman that he would consult his notes on the topic and hints he might cooperate further. Steinman writes Walker on August 31, sending him the MJ-12 briefing document and asking about Project Aquarius. Three weeks later, Walker replies, saying, “Some things you have right and some things you have very wrong.” He admits a machine was recovered and is still stored near “Wright Field.” Four normal looking males were found at the site, very much alive. “They learned the English language within a few hours, and it was our decision not to make public spectacles of them, but to allow them to be absorbed into American culture.” Each of the four, Walker alleges, became highly successful in technology, sports, and finance.

AUGUST 29th

1942 August 29 — Army Air Corps control tower operator Pvt. Michael Solomon sees two small reddish objects descend near the AAC Advanced Flying School at Columbus, Mississippi, then speed away. He later contacts government officials and officers from the school in attempting to confirm his sighting.

1946 August 29 — The American embassy in Stockholm tells the State Department that the ghost rockets are probably Soviet missiles. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf ; http://www.nicap.org/docs/460904_fbi.jpg

1952 August 29 — 10:50 a.m. Pilot LtJG William A. O’Flaherty and navigator LtJG R. S. Moore are flying a P4Y-2 patrol plane west of Thule Air Base, near Qaanaaq, Greenland. They are following an 85-foot-diameter Skyhook balloon launched from an icebreaker, US Coast Guard Cutter Eastwind when, upon release of the parachute instrument package from the balloon, they see 3 white discs or globes, about ½ to almost the full apparent size of the balloon, in triangle formation clustered to the right of the Skyhook instrument package at 74,000 feet for some 2–3 minutes. http://www.nicap.org/520829thule_dir.htm

1952 August 29 — 8:35 p.m. Civil Air Patrol pilot Carlton A. Magruder sees three aluminum-colored objects with a red-yellow exhaust over Colorado Springs, Colorado. They are 50 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, flying in line at about 1,500 mph. http://www.nicap.org/520829colorado_dir.htm ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1954 August 29 — 11:05 p.m. First Officer H. G. Gardner and Engineer J. V. D. Whitisy, flying on a Royal Dutch Airlines DC-4, see 3–4 dark, lens-shaped objects over Prins Christianssund radio and weather station, Greenland. They veer north and change position in formation.

1956 August 29 — T. Townsend Brown files incorporation papers for a new UFO group, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in Washington, D.C. (http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1956-Aug.pdf

1967 August 29 — Two children herding cows at Cussac, Cantal, France, see four small black beings about 47 inches tall around a landed sphere 15 feet in diameter. As the UFO begins to take off, the beings are sucked into it head-first, and it leaves very quickly in a blinding light. The police note “sulphur odour and the dried grass” at the landing spot. The case is reopened and studied in depth by Claude Poher. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_encounter_of_Cussac

1970 August 29 — 11:15 p.m. Several witnesses in Enebacken, Sweden, see a bright, round, red light maneuvering around the ground, emitting beams of yellow-white light. Three round landing marks in a triangular formation are found in the garden of Richard Johansson’s small farm near Lake Anten. Soil samples are taken and analyzed, with the results showing an increased level of gamma radiation in the test samples from one of the landing marks. http://www.noufors.com/landing_marks_near_Lake_Anten_Sweden_ufo_seen_in_area.html

1979 August 29 — 2:00 a.m. Russ Johnson is driving on Highway 50 on the western outskirts of Vermillion, South Dakota, when he spots a blinding headlight in front of him. It is stationary for 2 seconds, then it streaks toward him and engulfs his car. Johnson closes his eyes and hits the brakes, skidding the car to a stop, spinning sideways until it faces east. He opens his eyes and sees the light heading away west. The next day, the still-shaken Johnson goes to the site with Robert Adams at the University of South Dakota, who sees the skid marks.

1979 August 29 — 7:30 p.m. A married couple is taking their dog on a duck hunt between Dziki and Ernestowo, Poland, when they notice a “strange orange ball” coming from behind a hill about 3 miles away. The husband studies it through binoculars, estimating its speed as about 95 mph. The ball proves to be the front of a huge steel-colored cigar-shaped object, which stops 1,300 feet away and hovers above some buildings for about 10 seconds. They can see five large, square windows with rounded corners; the three in the front glow with orange light, while the other two seem covered by a shade. The object moves forward about 40 feet and stops. Half a minute later, sparks shoot from the rear and the UFO vanishes over the horizon. An orange glow remains behind. Alojzy Pawlik sees the same object in Laskowice at about the same time.

1979 August 29 — 10:00 p.m. A 47-year-old housewife sees the lower corner of a gigantic “mothership” outside her living room window in a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois. The blimp-like UFO is so huge she can’t see the whole length or height. It extends the whole block of houses at treetop level. She reports four different kinds of humanoid creatures (7 in all) visible through the hull, which is luminous and yellow in color. She hears a loud humming sound. The duration is 45 minutes.

1979 August 29 — 10:30 p.m. Charles Weeden and his father see an orange light moving erratically in the sky to the west over Sycamore, Illinois. They call the police, and Deputy Berna Van Vlerah looks outside the station 2.5 miles west of the Weedens and sees the orange light to her southeast, low above the horizon. Using binoculars, she sees a flat-bottomed orange dome shape within the light. She watches it for 5 minutes, then drives to the Weedens and watches it there to the west.

1979 August 29 — 11:15 p.m. Harry Joe Turner is driving a 1974 Kenworth tractor-trailer loaded with mustard and ketchup on US Highway 17 two miles from Warrenton, Virginia. His CB radio starts acting up, giving out a noise that gets louder and louder. Something grabs him tightly on his left shoulder. He sees a large object looming over his cab and hears two thumps. Even though he is going 70 mph, he sees a figure standing outside. When it throws open the door, Turner grabs his .32 automatic pistol and fires 8 rounds at it with no effect. He then blacks out. Turner wakes up in the passenger seat at 3:00 a.m. at his destination in a Fredericksburg warehouse but can’t remember how he got there. The odometer indicates he has only traveled 17 miles, not 80, yet he has used 114 gallons of fuel. The top 2 inches of the CB antenna are melted off, and 30 inches of the AM/FM antenna has broken off. A filmy substance covers the truck. He drives back home but is confused and his eyes are overly sensitive to light. Turner waks up in a Winchester hospital diagnosed with a broken blood vessel in his left eye. He begins to remember more about the experience and recalls his truck being lifted into a UFO piloted by two humanlike figures dressed in white shirts and pants, one of whom is named Alpha La Zoo Loo. He seems to take a trip in space to a planet beyond Alpha Centauri. On September 3, after taking valium, Turner is arrested for speeding. He thinks aliens are chasing him. Turner continues to undergo anxiety attacks. Allan Hendry and Fred Whiting from the Center for UFO Studies are unable to corroborate Turner’s story, and the two antennas appear to be deliberately altered.

1996 August 29 — 8:00 p.m. A mechanic notices a white mass of light at Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. His car acts up a bit, but the light vanishes, and it returns to normal. At 9:30 p.m., on the return trip, the white mass returns and paces the car for several kilometres. The engine misses and the headlights go out. He can now see a cigar-shaped object about 650 feet away, so he gets out, checks the engine, and finds nothing wrong. The UFO moves off and the car starts again.

AUGUST 28th

1897 August 28 — 3:00 a.m. Luther Myers hears dogs barking outside his home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When he looks through the window, he sees a rapidly moving airship with a light on each end. It has a propeller and rotates as it moves forward.

1945 August 28 — Twelve 5th Air Force intelligence specialists flying on a C-46 approaching Iwo Jima (in the Ogasawara Islands, Japan) see three white, teardrop-shaped objects paralleling the plane. Navigational needles go wild, the engine sputters, and the plane falters until the objects speed away. One of the passengers is future UFO investigator Leonard Stringfield. http://www.nicap.org/450828iwojima_dir.htm

1951 August 28 — Project Twinkle personnel talk to LaPaz about the green fireballs and he insists they are not meteors.

1952 August 28 — A family on the ground in Le Roy, New York, sees a disc making tight vertical circles around an airliner.

1952 August 28 — 9:30 p.m. Three civilians in Chickasaw, Alabama, report to Brookley AFB [now Mobile Downtown Airport] in Mobile, Alabama, their observation of multiple red stationary and maneuvering objects to the south, and another one moving from south to west, all in the direction of Brookley. AFOSI agent Charles A. Robinson arrives in Chickasaw at 9:50 p.m. to investigate and sees the same four objects to the south and southwest at an estimated 8–12 miles distance. One fiery red object is stationary for 15 minutes then drifts 15°–20° to the right after which it is stationary again. Radar operator A/2C Irl A. Whitaker visually spots a red-green object over Chickasaw to the north. USAF duty officer Capt. William A. Edwards and control tower operators see one object to the southwest to the right and lower than the moon, and another object to the west at 10°–20° elevation. The latter is confirmed by radar as a stationary target at four miles range and 4,000 feet altitude. Robinson and others see one object explode, and another does a figure 8 manoeuvre. There are 4–6 objects larger than a star or planet varying from fiery red, red-blue, red-green, and sparkling diamond appearance. A civilian Air Force employee sees a flat oval shape. http://www.nicap.org/520828brookleydir.htm

1953 August 28 — A Ground Observer Corps volunteer watches 14 cigar-shaped UFOs silently moving over San Rafael, California. One appears to be leading the formation at about 200 mph. They are first seen heading west through breaks in the clouds, then turn north and disappear behind clouds.

1954 August 28 — 8:30 p.m. Several USAF fighter pilots pursue a triangular formation of 15 objects near Tinker AFB, Oklahoma City, tracked by ground radar. As the jets approach, the formation breaks, changes to a semicircle, and the objects speed up and vanish to the west. http://www.nicap.org/540828tinker_dir.htm

1963 August 28 — 7:00 p.m. José Marcos Gomes Vidal, 7, and his friends Fernando, 12, and Ronaldo Gualberto, 7, are in the Gualbertos’s backyard in Sagrada Familia, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to wash a coffee strainer in a cistern. Suddenly, Fernando notices a glow coming from the top of an avocado tree. When he looks up, he sees a UFO hovering above the tree’s branches. The craft, which is spherical and has a pair of antennas on top, is completely transparent. It holds four human-like passengers sitting inside, one of whom sits in front of a machine that appears to be a control panel. The passengers are about 6 feet tall and dressed in spacesuits. They all have only one eye like a cyclops. Three of them are thin and bald, while the other looks like an overweight woman with blonde hair. The UFO shoots out two rays of yellow light. One of the cyclops appears between the lights, slowly floating down onto the ground. Once his boots touched the earth, the creature begins to walk toward José, who is completely unaware of what is happening since he is still collecting water. Fernando panics and tackles José, who falls to the ground, and Fernando gets back up and faces the cyclops. Now all three boys are aware of the visitor. The cyclops moves his head and makes hand signals. It speaks a few sounds in a strange language. The creature then turns around and stares back at the UFO. Fernando, spotting a brick on the ground, picks it up and aims it at the cyclops, who turns around and shoots Fernando’s hand with a yellow light from a triangular crest on his chest. Fernando drops the brick, and all three of the boys become calm and frozen. For a few more minutes, the cyclops speaks to them, then it points one of his fingers at the moon and begins to walk back toward the UFO. José asks if he will ever come back. The cyclops shakes his head affirmatively, plucks a plant from the ground, and then waves his hand at the UFO, which shoots out two rays of yellow light again. The cyclops slowly floats back up into the vehicle, and the UFO takes off eastward and disappears out of their sight. https://bizarreandgrotesque.com/2016/03/24/the-alien-cyclops-of-sagrada-familia/

1977 August 28 — 12:10 a.m. For more than 20 minutes, police (including PC Ian MacKenzie, PS James Trohear, PC Alexander Inglis, and PC David Wild) and citizens in Windermere, Cumbria, UK, watch a large lighted object in the shape of a “stingray fish” (triangular). It flies slowly at 1,500 feet altitude, hovering occasionally. All witnesses describe it as silent, except for one, who hears a “quiet hum.”

1978 August 28 —Six papers are presented at the American Psychological Association Symposium in Toronto, Ontario, relating to the topic of using hypnosis to investigate UFO experiences. The presenters are H. Kent Newman, R. Leo Sprinkle, James Harder, Alvin Lawson, W. C. McCall, and Michael Persinger.

1999 August 28 — Larry W. Bryant files suit in District Court for the District of Columbia for the FBI to release its files on Stanton T. Friedman.

1995 August 28 — Fox TV broadcasts for the first time the “alien autopsy film,” a 17-minute black-and-white film supposedly depicting a secret medical examination of autopsy of an alien by the US military. The program, hosted by Jonathan Frakes, is given the title Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. London-based entrepreneur Ray Santilli presents it as an authentic autopsy on the body of an alien recovered from the 1947 crash of a flying disc near Roswell, New Mexico. The film footage is allegedly supplied to him by a retired military cameraman who wishes to remain anonymous. The program causes a sensation, with Time magazine declaring that the film has sparked a debate “with an intensity not lavished on any home movie since the Zapruder film.” Fox rebroadcasts the program twice, each time to higher ratings. In 2006, Santilli admits the film is not authentic but rather a staged reconstruction of footage he claims to have viewed in 1992, but which had deteriorated and become unusable by the time he made his film. He claims that a few frames from the original were embedded in his film, but he never specifies which ones. The existence of an original filmstrip of the alleged autopsy has never been independently verified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_autopsy

2004 August 28 — 10:11 p.m. A circular metallic UFO the size of an airliner is seen above the Pemex oil refinery in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. It is accompanied by six luminous spheres at an altitude of about 3,300 feet. The larger craft performs erratic maneuvers at high speed.

AUGUST 27th

1951 August 27 — At a conference at Holloman AFB on the green fireballs, Project Twinkle’s Maj. Edward A. Doty expresses scepticism about the project. Meteorologist Bernard “Duke” Gildenberg tells those assembled that he has never seen anything out of the ordinary, nor has astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. The commanding officer at Holloman wants to cease allocating funds for the project.

1952 August 27 — 4:45 a.m. Two meteorological officers at Macdonald Airport in Manitoba see a disc-shaped object with shadows on it. It makes two turns around the airfield. When the rotating airport beacon light strikes it, the object glints like shiny aluminum, speeds away to the northeast, and vanishes.

1953 August 27 — 9:45 p.m. A USAF pilot, M/Sgt, and others, all on the ground, see a meandering light for 50 minutes at Greenville AFB [now Mid-Delta Regional Airport], Mississippi. http://www.nicap.org/chronos/1953fullrep.htm

1956 August 27 — 7:20 p.m. Royal Canadian Air Force pilot Robert James “Chick” Childerhose is flying nearly due west over the Canadian Rockies near Fort Macleod, Alberta. He is flying at 36,000 feet in the second position (far left side) of a formation of four F-86 Sabre jet aircraft. While approaching a large thunderhead (cumulonimbus) at a ground speed of about 460 mph, he sees at a much lower altitude a “bright light which was sharply defined and disc-shaped” or “like a shiny silver dollar sitting horizontal.” He takes a color photo. An analysis suggests that it would have been radiating in excess of a gigawatt of power within the spectral range of the film. http://www.nicap.org/560827alberta_dir.htm

1966 August 27 — Hynek releases to the press a letter rejected by Science magazine in which he reports a pattern to UFO sightings that “suggests that something is going on” and disputing seven misconceptions about UFOs.

1968 August 27 — David Saunders proposes to the Colorado project team that they issue technical reports on whatever phase or case they have concentrated on. These will be circulated among the staff for review but not for veto. They would stand as the author’s own work without censure. Appropriate disclaimers would be attached before they are issued to the public. A final report might be cobbled together from these technical reports. Condon and Low apparently disapprove this immediately.

1978 August 27 — 1:40 p.m. Arthur Silva is flying a Cessna 150 about 10 miles north of Provincetown, Massachusetts, with Harold Johnson as passenger. Johnson sees a bright reflective object at the same altitude (2,500 feet) directly ahead about 4 miles away. It moves closer, picking up speed and shooting by them at about 600 mph, apparently missing the plane by 1,000 feet. It is a silvery-white, metallic sphere with no wings and about 18 feet in diameter.

1979 August 27 — 1:40 a.m. Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson is on duty in the west end of Marshall County, Minnesota, driving on County Highway 5 west of Stephen when he sees a light through his side window. The light is to his south, shining from a grove of trees standing along State Highway 220 near the Red River. He thinks it might be from a downed drug-smuggling airplane. He turns south on 220, accelerates to 65 mph, and moves closer. The light moves toward him, traveling so fast that it crosses the 1.5 miles separating them almost instantaneously. It makes no sound and still looks just like a blinding light. Johnson hears glass breaking and sees the inside of the patrol car light up. After the light hits, he loses consciousness. When he wakes up, his head is resting on the steering wheel and his eyes are staring at the red “engine” light on the dashboard. He looks out the window and sees the car has skidded sideways across the northbound lane and now faces eastward. The front tires are touching the gravel on the shoulder. He can see only with difficulty and feels like he is moving in slow motion. At 2:19 a.m., he radios headquarters and asks for assistance. Deputy Greg Winskowski arrives on the scene shortly. Johnson is still inside the car with a red bump on his forehead, so he calls an ambulance. At the hospital, Dr. W. A. Pinsonneault examines Johnson’s eyes, but the probe light hurts so much that Johnson cannot stand it more than a few seconds at a time. Pinsonneault suspects corneal flash burns and covers his eyes with bandages. Sheriff Dennis Brekke drives Johnson’s 1977 Ford LTD patrol car back to the garage. The inside light on the driver’s side is smashed. On the hood, 4 feet 4 inches behind the smashed light and close to the windshield, is a flat-bottomed, circular dent, half an inch in diameter. A crack in the windshield on the driver’s side about 18 inches behind the dent runs top to bottom, with four apparent impacts; it looks as if a cluster of small objects, stones perhaps, have done the damage. The car’s battery-powered clock, set correctly at 7:00 p.m. when Johnson came on duty, is 14 minutes late. So is Johnson’s wind-up wristwatch, set at the same time. The red plastic lens covering the roof light on the driver’s side shows a triangular puncture, and the lens is dislodged from the housing. A radio antenna shaft is bent over at a 60° angle. The large “bubble” lamp just inches in front of the antenna is unscathed. The trunk antenna for CB radio is bent at 90°. Brekke, after calling the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, takes Johnson to Grand Forks, North Dakota, at 11:00 a.m. for an eye examination by ophthalmologist Leonard Prochaska, who finds that Johnson’s problems have cleared up. Allan Hendry of CUFOS determines that the car damage is inconsistent with anything an airplane could have caused. Meridan French, a windshield expert with the Glass Division of Ford Motor Company, concludes that a flat-ended object had made a forceful impact with the hood and then tilted toward the windshield. A team of engineers at Honeywell’s materials testing laboratory indicates that flying particles were responsible for the damage to the headlight glass and lamp plastic. http://www.nicap.org/790827marshallco_dir.htm ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Johnson_incident

1979 August 27 — 2:30 p.m. Flying instructor Laurie Adlington has just left Blackbushe Airport in Yateley, Hampshire, UK, with Lt. James Plastow from Sandhurst Military College for his pilot’s license test in a Cessna 150. They are at 2,000 feet heading toward Basingstoke when Adlington suddenly grabs the controls and throws the Cessna into a steep bank and descent to avoid a collision. An object suddenly speeds past the front of the aircraft, coming within a few feet of the windshield. The rotating object is about 12 inches in diameter, shaped like a doughnut, reflects light with a silvery glow “like a blob of mercury,” and has a honeycombed surface. They can make out the hint of an aerial on one side. The object begins flying around the plane for a short time before it flies underneath it and then streaks upward and away to about 3,000 feet. Possible early use of a drone.

1995 August 27 — 9:30 a.m. Tim Edwards shoots a video of a disc-shaped object hovering then darting about the sky over Salida, Colorado. A series of ripples or moving lights are seen to rotate from left to right on the object, which stays just above the sun while Edwards, his daughter, and four construction workers also watch. UFO investigators are not impressed with the video, which might be spider web or cottonwood fluff. Bruce Maccabee thinks it might be a genuine UFO. https://www.deseret.com/1995/11/30/19207413/colorado-man-and-his-films-bring-ufo-meet-back-to-earth ; https://salidaarchive.info/ufo-over-salida/

AUGUST 26th

1897 August 26 — 6:45 p.m. An airship with an attached car is seen moving steadily southwest above Asheville, North Carolina, by Dr. Willard P. Whittington and two other men who are standing on Grove Street. It is about one mile in altitude.

1951 August 26 — 8:28 p.m. A radar station at Larson AFB [now Grant County International Airport], near Moses Lake, Washington, tracks a UFO at 13,000 feet going 950 mph on two different sets, AN/CPS-1 and AN/CPS-4, for about 6 minutes. An F-86 is scrambled, but radar contact is lost before the plane gets off the ground. An electronic signal is received from this object that appears to be a mode-one IFF response from an AN/APX-6 transponder. This response is received twice at approx.115 miles and 80 miles from the radar station. http://www.nicap.org/510826larson_dir.htm

1953 August 26 — USAF issues Air Force Regulation 200-2, which tightens UFO reporting and investigating procedures, further restricting the release of UFO information and superseding Air Force Letter 200-5. It directs that all confirmed UFO reports be sent electronically to air force intelligence. Tangible evidence must go to ATIC in Dayton. It also confines UFO investigations to three groups: USAF intelligence at the Pentagon, the 4602nd AISS, and ATIC (although ATIC only gets reports after they go to the 4602nd). Sightings are only to be discussed with “authorized personnel.” Reports by USAF personnel no longer go to Project Blue Book, which is now only a PR front. Some good cases still go there, but far fewer unidentifieds. Only solved cases are to be discussed publicly; those still unidentified are to remain classified at the Restricted level. http://www.nicap.org/directives/AFR%20200-2,%20Aug%20%2026,1953.pdf

1960 August 26 — 9:00 p.m. Director Robert I. Johnson and other staff at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois, observe a faint reddish object in the sky moving from east to west, apparently the same mystery satellite seen and photographed by the Grumman observers.

1962 August 26 — 12:05 a.m. Geraldo Bichara, 18, is standing guard at the Escola de Sargentos das Armas in Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil, when an electrical blackout occurs in the city. Suddenly he is paralyzed by a light beam from an unseen object, apparently for a few minutes. In 1980, Bichara undergoes hypnosis and discovers that the incident was an abduction in which he is taken aboard a UFO by beings wearing pumpkin-colored jumpsuits and subjected to a medical examination. He attempts to flee at one point and grabs his rifle lying nearby, but he is still paralyzed. After about 2 hours he is returned to the guardhouse.

1968 August 26 — Kenneth Flack is passing a car near Texas Creek, Colorado, when his engine and car lights fail. He pulls to the side of the road, along with the car he is passing and a camper-trailer. He sees a large object in a field some 900–1,200 feet away. It is football-shaped and silvery. He approaches it and is hit by a bright light which knocks him out.

1975 August 26 — 3:15 a.m. Terry O’Leary, his girlfriend Jackie Larson, and Jackie’s mother Sandy Larson leave Fargo, North Dakota for Bismarck., which they plan to reach around 7:00 a.m. Forty-five miles into their trip on Interstate 94, they see a brilliant flash of light and sounds like thunder. About 50 yards away on their left, they watch 8–10 orange, glowing objects heading south to east. One is distinctly larger than the others. The lights descend in a straight line at a 30° angle until they stop over a grove of trees. Suddenly one of the objects splits in half and others shoot away. At this point, the witnesses feel peculiar sensations of being unable to move. Jackie finds herself sitting in the back seat (she had been in the front seat with the others) and the lights are gone. The witnesses drive on to Tower City, North Dakota, where Sandy notes the time is 5:23 a.m., an hour later than it should have been. Through a mutual friend, Sandy eventually contacts ufologist Jerome Clark, who puts her in touch with psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, who has used hypnotic regression in abduction cases. Sprinkle conducts three hypnotic sessions with Sandy and Jackie Larson on December 4–6. Sandy remembers a 6-foot-tall entity that looks like a mummy, various medical procedures, and a journey to a place with sand. She has further regressions with Sprinkle in January and February 1976, and she describes an otherworldly journey with three beings on a UFO. Clark writes: “What makes the Larson story interesting, in retrospect, however, is its anticipation of many abduction motifs which, though barely noted or entirely unknown in 1975, had become repeatedly demonstrated aspects of the experience by the late 1980s.

1983 August 26 — 4:00 a.m. A Mrs. Zurwaski is awakened by brilliant white flashes of light reflecting off the trees to the east of her house in Cedar Lake, Indiana. She gets up, thinking a thunderstorm is approaching, and she sees the screen on the front door flooded with intense light. Her husband is also awake by now, and he describes the light as yellowish. Through a picture window, Mr. Zurwaski sees an object hovering 4–5 feet off the ground in their yard. Mrs. Zurawski hears a swoosh and a crackle and notices a ribbon of light moving southeast. Five days later, they discover in their yard a ring of dead grass in a perfect circle 13 feet in diameter.

2003 August 26 — Members of the Defense Committee on the Chilean Chamber of Deputies analyse information on UFOs for the first time. It hears testimony, largely reports from pilots and air traffic controllers, provided by the Comité de Estudios de Fénomenos Aéreos Anómalos and the director of OVNIvision (both Chilean UFO research groups). Defense Committee Chairman Arturo Cardemil tells the media that UFOs have sometimes disrupted air-traffic operations.

AUGUST 25th

1835 August 25–31 — The New York Sun publishes a series of six articles on the alleged discovery by English astronomer John Herschel of plants, animals, and winged people on the lunar surface. Using a huge and powerful telescope, Herschel supposedly sees herds of bison-like quadrupeds, a spherical amphibious creature, and a bipedal beaver that lives in huts. The humans are man-bats “covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs.” The article is an elaborate hoax. Herschel hasn’t observed life on the moon at all, nor is Herschel even aware of the story until much later. The announcement causes enormous excitement throughout America and Europe. Authorship of the article is usually attributed to Richard Adams Locke, a reporter who is working for The Sun at the time. Locke publicly admits to being the author in 1840, in a letter to the weekly paper New World, although his intent is satire, not misinformation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax

1951 August 25 — Evening. Joseph Bryant and his wife, at 407 West Powell Street, Brownfield, Texas, see a loose group of glowing lights heading north to south. They are a “little bigger than a star.” A few minutes later a second group flies over, and then a third, which circles around the house. This time Bryant can hear them, and he identifies them as plovers. When he hears about the Lubbock lights, he is sure the professors are seeing plovers.

1951 August 25 — 9:10 p.m. Three Texas Technical College professors (geologist Wilbur Irvin Robinson, chemist Aaron Gustav “Gus” Oberg, and petroleum engineer William Lyon Ducker Jr.) are sitting in a backyard at Lubbock, Texas, when they see a fast-moving, semicircular formation of 20–30 lights, as intense as bright stars but larger. Blue-green and silent, they move across the sky in seconds. A second group appears and repeats the performance. Others, including Carl Hemminger at Texas Tech, report seeing the same objects the same night. J. Russell Heitman, head of the Texas Tech journalism department, says he had seen an identical group of lights several days earlier. The professors watch 10–12 such flights through November 1 (including on September 1 and 5), sometimes accompanied by colleagues Ellis Richard Heineman, E. F. George, Grayson Mead, and John Brand. Some researchers, including Ruppelt and Hynek, think the witnesses are seeing migrating plovers attracted to Lubbock’s new vapor streetlights, although Ruppelt changes his mind later. http://www.nicap.org/510825lubbock_dir.htm ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1951.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubbock_Lights ; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=152

1951 August 25 — Around 9:58 p.m. Hugh Young, a security guard at Sandia Base, and his wife Emily are in their trailer home in east Albuquerque, New Mexico, and watch a large object like a flying wing, but 1.5 times as large as a B-36, flying at 80 feet at about 300 mph. It has glowing white lights on the trailing edge of the wing and is completely silent. http://www.nicap.org/510825albuquerque_dir.htm

1952 August 25 — 3:40 p.m. At Holloman AFB, New Mexico, plant supervisor Fred Lee and foreman Lawrence A. Aguilar watch a round silver object for 5 minutes. It flies south, turns and flies north, makes a 360° turn, then flies away vertically. http://www.nicap.org/520825holloman_dir.htm

1952 August 25 — 5:50 a.m. William Squires, a radio station musician at KOAM [now KKOW-AM] is driving from his home northeast of Frontenac, Kansas, to the station at Pittsburg. He is in his 1952 Jeep station wagon on a rough gravel road about a quarter of a mile from US Highway 160 when he sees a large, disc-shaped object hovering 10 feet in the air on the right side of the road 750 feet away. The UFO looks like two bowls placed together end to end, 75 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 15 feet high in the midsection. Through a window he can see the head and shoulders of a motionless human figure. Along its outer edge are a series of propellers 6–8 inches in diameter, spaced closely together and mounted on a bracket so they revolve “in a horizontal plane” along the edge of the object. He stops and gets out to watch it. As he is walking toward the object, it rises into the air and flies away at great speed. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/bb/1972.htm

1952 August 25 — 9:25 p.m. Affa of Uranus contacts the Baileys, the Streeters, and the Williamsons (as well as two students named Ronald Tucker and Betty Bowen) by radio, using 405 or 450 kilocycles. Zo and Um of Neptune, Regga of Mars, and other aliens continue sending messages by both radio and telepathy. Streeter sees a dark spot in the sky that he claims is Affa. Williamson sees a blue light that he thinks is Zo. Everyone signs an affidavit that the events have truly taken place.

1959 August 25 — 11:00 a.m. At Eveking, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Lutz Holtman walks towards a bright object in a forest and faints after he gets close to it. When he regains consciousness, he sees the UFO take off silently and vertically. The object is circular, has a tripod landing gear and two rows of bright openings, and is about 90 feet in diameter.

1960 August 25 — The “dark satellite” is seen and photographed five times by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation at Bethpage, Long Island, New York. It is supposed to be three times faster than the Echo 1 satellite and travels east to west in a retrograde orbit, rather than west to east. Its inclination to the equator is about 135°. The color of the object varies from “carrot to straw.” The Grumman observers estimate that the object is in an eccentric orbit with an apogee of as much as 4,200 miles and a perigee of about 300 miles. They immediately produce a proposal to the US Air Force to share data in the hopes of plotting a firm orbit for the mystery satellite. http://www.nicap.org/docs/grummanreport.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/docs/grummanlett.htm ; http://nicap.org/600825mystery_satellite_dir.htm

1961 August 25? — Five people at Toulouse, France, see a luminous, yellow object, 24 feet in diameter, flying about 30 feet above a road. The object has horizontal and vertical bands of darker tone that give the appearance of “windows.” The UFO flies upwards very quickly when the car reaches town.

1967 August 25 — 5:00 p.m. Ruben Norato sees a “precipitous movement of the water” from the beach at Catia La Mar, Vargas, Venezuela, from which arise “three huge plate-shaped discs” that streak out of sight.

1968 August 25 — 5:00 a.m. Hospital assistant Maria José Cintra of the Serafim Ferrreira sanaitarium in Lins, São Paulo, Brazil, hears a noise like the braking of a car. Cintra readies herself to meet people needing medical assistance. She opens a glass door and asks the visitor if she is a patient. The visitor, just over 6 feet tall, answers in an unknown language. The visitor is wearing a blue satiny cape, matching shoes, and a dress with a high collar and long sleeves. She shows Cintra a vessel with engraved ornaments, and Cintra fills it with water from a fountain and offers her a doughnut. The visitor walks to the door of the sanitorium and through some flowerbeds. At this point Cintra notices a semicircular “pebble-like” light on the ground and a UFO floating 1–2 feet above the grass. She feels the force of an invisible rotating movement and notices that the visitor is no longer there. The UFO rises into the air, making soft sounds like those she heard when the visitor arrived. Later, she and the sanitorium manager and his wife find high-heeled footprints on the freshly waxed floor near the door. On the lawn they discover a spot of scorched grass that persists for 4 months. Subsequent investigation reveals a depression in the ground 5–7 inches deep, apparently made by a vehicle with a diameter of about 6.5 feet. From his bed, another patient has seen the UFO land some 260 feet from the fence of the sanitorium and remain there for 15 minutes. https://www.fenomenum.com.br/ufo/casuistica/1960/lins ; http://www.oarquivo.com.br/variedades/e-books/download/7-esoterismo/1149-ao_e_reao.html

1974 August 25 — After 10:00 p.m. A document is leaked to UFO researchers in the US and UK in 1992 and apparently composed by someone within the US intelligence community who either personally knew about the case or who has run across top-secret documents. Now known as the “Deneb Report,” the document alleges that the following incident took place. Military radar at Corpus Christi, Texas, detects an unknown target moving toward the Texas Gulf coast. Traveling at a speed of 2,500 mph at an altitude of 75,000 feet, the UFO is first spotted over the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles east of Corpus. After going through maneuvers suggesting intelligent control, the object quickly turns south along the Texas coast, avoiding entry over land, and seems headed toward Brownsville. As the disc continues to hug the Texas coastline, it exhibits controlled descent, calculated turns, speed reductions, and other clear indications of control. The object descends from 75,000 feet to about 45,000 feet by the time it crosses over land into northern Mexico, about 40 miles south of Brownsville. Its speed is down to 2,000 mph and it is slowing very gradually. Zigzagging around mountain peaks that tower above 5,000 feet, the UFO continues to descend, although its speed is still near 2,000 mph at the time that it encounters another aircraft headed toward it on a collision course. Somewhere over a vast desert plain known as El Llano near Coyame, Chihuahua, Mexico, a mid-air collision occurs with a small aircraft flying from El Paso to Mexico City. Debris from the crash rains down on the desert plain below, and efforts are soon underway by both Mexico and the US to recover the remains. Mexican spotter planes first locate the wreckage of the aircraft, even as US electronic surveillance personnel listen in on the rescue activities from across the Texas border. The Americans hear the Mexican spotter planes say that the small craft is almost totally destroyed and that they have found a second crash site nearby with the remains of a nearly intact, shiny, silvery disc. The object is 16 feet, 5 inches in diameter, and equally convex on both upper and lower surfaces. There is an outer rim around the central circumference. The height is slightly less than 5 feet. They see no visible portholes, doors, or markings. In addition, no lights of any kind are apparent.
There is also no obvious mechanism for propulsion. The external surface of the disc is like silvery polished steel. Mexican troops recover the crashed disc, winching it up onto the bed of a large military truck. They also retrieve fragments of the crashed civilian aircraft, although there is not much left of it.

1984 August 25 — Philip Imbrogno and Peter Gersten convene a public meeting on the Hudson Valley sightings in a middle school in Brewster, New York, and 1,500 people show up. Hynek attends, as well as news media, various people from the FBI, Air Force officers from Pease AFB [now Pease Air National Guard Base], and a mysterious man who has met with Imbrogno and claims to be from the National Security Agency. The Pozzuoli videotape is shown and 900 people fill out UFO sighting reports. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/25/nyregion/strange-sights-brighten-the-night-skies-upstate.html

AUGUST 24th

1946 August 24 — Stockholm Air Attaché Maj. Gen. Alfred A. Kessler Jr. informs the War Department that the Ghost Rockets are an “unintentional hoax which developed naturally but which exploited by Defense staff by implication and lack of frankness possibly interest defense budget and to alert west against east.” http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron2.htm

1946 August 24 — The Commander of US Naval Forces in Europe writes a letter to the US naval attaché in Oslo, Norway, on “Rocket Bombs or Guided Missiles over Norway and Sweden.” Two “missiles” have fallen into a lake near Oslo, and the US Navy is “very interested.” http://www.project1947.com/fig/46alusna.htm

1946 August 24 — Evening. A Norwegian student and a Swedish engineer are boating on a small river “somewhere in Sweden” when a light approaches them from the southeast. It resembles a full moon and emits an intense light: “As it passed immediately overhead, it grew so bright you could see a well as on a sunny day.” The object, about 10 feet long, releases four stars that fall silently to the ground. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1952 August 24 — 10:15 a.m. USAF Col. Gerald W. Johnson is flying an F-84G when he sees two silver balls in the vicinity of Hermanas (a ghost town), New Mexico. They seem to be 6 feet in diameter and 2 miles away. One seems to change into a long, gray object as it is turning to the right. After 3 minutes they disappear, then reappear 7 minutes later, by which time the F-84 is over El Paso, Texas. One after the other, the objects climb straight up 2,000–3,000 feet. http://www.nicap.org/520824hermanas_dir.htm

1952 August 24 — Williamson, Streeter, and Bailey receive coded radio messages indicating the saucer intelligences intend to land, inviting them to help.

1953 August 24 — Contactee George Van Tassel gets to step, for the first time, inside a flying saucer, when an extraterrestrial named Solganda wakes him up and leads him to a waiting ship, giving him a tour of the interior and a technique for rejuvenating the human body before dropping him off and shooting back into space.

1966 August 24 — 10:00 p.m. Airman 3d Class Michael D. Mueller reports by base radio seeing a multicolored light high in the sky above the Minot AFB M-6 Minuteman launch site southeast of Norma, North Dakota. A team goes to his location and confirms the object and sees a second white object passing in front of clouds. The base radar detects the object, which is tracked at about 100,000 feet (20 miles). The object rises and descends a number of times, and each time Maj. Chester A. Shaw Jr., in charge of the M-6 missile crew, finds his radio transmission interrupted by static, even though he is 60 feet underground. The UFO gradually descends to ground level 10–15 miles south of the base. The Air Force sends a strike team to check on it. When they are within 10 miles of the site, static disrupts their radio contact. Five to eight minutes later, the glow diminishes, and the UFO takes off. Another UFO is sighted and tracked on radar; the first object flies underneath this second one. The two objects disappear separately. The entire episode lasts about 4 hours and is confirmed by two other missile launch sites, M-4 and N-7 (near Mohall). Another report from the same time period mentions that some missiles went off alert for 24 hours after a UFO sighting at the N-1 missile alert facility. http://www.nicap.org/660824minot_dir.htm

1978 August 24 — 10:00 p.m. A 54-year-old cook is driving north from her brother’s house about 10 miles south of Ottumwa, Iowa. She is on Cliffland Road alongside the Des Moines River in a wooded, rural area. A full-moon-sized red-orange light shoots silently from the east to the west in several seconds. As it flies across the front of her car, her windshield fogs up and the car stalls out to a stop. The interference lasts only a few seconds, and the car restarts without her turning the key; the window defogs as quickly as it had steamed up. She last sees the light against a background of trees up ahead, lower than the treetops.

1978 August 24 — 11:40 p.m. Two 19-year-old girls, driving west near tiny Ginghamsburg, Ohio, watch two oddly colored orange lights twice the size of aircraft landing lights. A humming sound can be heard both from the lights and from the car radio. The driver can’t get the car to go faster than about 20 mph. The lights are coming from the left, one directly over the other. They look away momentarily and the lights are gone; they look again, and the lights are moving above the car. From the south they have moved to the northwest over a field. A rod or a light beam comes down from one ball of light and shines a light at the witnesses for one second. The driver tries to flash the car lights at it, to no avail. They look away briefly and do not notice how the lights vanish.

1990 August 24 — 8:35 p.m. Many witnesses in northern Germany see a formation of seven luminous objects over the Baltic Sea. They hover for nearly 30 minutes near Peenemünde (on Usedom) and the Soviet-built nuclear power plant at Lubmin [shut down soon afterward]. Five people, including nuclear physicist Ludmilla Ivanova, videotape the event from Greifswald, enabling researchers to triangulate the lights and reconstruct their positions. Ufologist Illobrand von Ludwiger’s group MUFON-Central European Section obtains 6 videos and 11 photos from different observers and interviews more than a dozen witnesses. They conclude that two groups of luminous spheres hovered nearly motionless for about 30 minutes over the sea. The brighter and closer group forms a circle of 6 spheres. The second group is in the shape of a “Y,” with some spheres performing individual movements. Some of them move back and forth between the two groups. They are able to move extremely fast, estimated by one witness as “supersonic velocity,” then come to an abrupt stop when reaching the formation.

AUGUST 23rd

1946 August 23 — The British Foreign Office states that English radar experts, including Reginald Victor Jones, having returned from Sweden, had “submitted secret reports to the British government on the origin of the rockets.”

1947 August 23 — FBI memo from Alan H. Belmont to D. Milton Ladd on green fireballs. http://www.nicap.org/docs/500823_FBI.pdf

1951 August 23 — Frank Wisner succeeds Allen Dulles as CIA Deputy Director of Plans in the Office of Policy Coordination, with Richard Helms as chief of operations. In this position, Wisner is instrumental in supporting pro-American forces that toppled Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Sometime this year he visits Richard M. Bissell Jr. and asks him to finance OPC operations by diverting some Marshall Plan funds, presumably for covert black ops.

1952 August 23 — Tele news Productions re-releases its 1950 UFO documentary short, The Flying Saucer Mystery, edited and expanded to 12½ minutes with new material. It features footage from the July 29, 1952, press conference given by Air Force Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, the UFO photo taken by Shell Alpert, a photo taken by August C. Roberts, German UFO occupant witnesses Oskar and Gabriele Linke, Frank Scully, and U.S. Army Engineers physicist Noel W. Scott. https://thesaucersthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-flying-saucer-mystery-and-1952-ufo.html ; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188624/

1953 August 23 — 12:00 noon. Tom P. Drury, deputy director of the Civilian Aviation Department at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, takes 24 frames of 8mm color film of a silvery object that emerges from a cloud and climbs quickly, leaving a vapor trail. The Royal Australian Air Force and USAF intelligence are said to have studied the film, which has since disappeared, with only a few third generation stills of poor quality remaining. Later researchers suspect a daytime meteor. http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/kbpddrury.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/530823australia_dir.htm; https://www.auforn.com/Bill_Chalker_4.htm ; https://www.auforn.com/Bill_Chalker_5.htm

1954 August 23 — 1:00 a.m. Businessman Bernard Miserey has just parked his car in a garage at Vernon, Eure, France, when he notices a sudden illumination. He sees an object like an enormous (300 feet long) cigar standing on end, hovering above the north bank of the Seine River about 1,000 feet away. Suddenly from the bottom of the object comes a horizontal disc that drops, slows, and suddenly dives horizontally across the river at him. It vanishes at a high rate of speed toward the southwest. Three other discs follow in sequence. A fifth disc drops much lower than the earlier ones and remains still for an instant, swaying slightly. During this time the cigar has faded and sinks into darkness. The spectacle has lasted 45 minutes. Two police officers and an Army engineer also see the
display. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-June-Aug.pdf

1955 August 23–24 — 11:50 p.m. Personnel at the Ground Observer Corps tower in Hamilton County, Ohio, notice three white spheres between Columbus and Cincinnati. Tracking the UFOs on radar, they notify SAC at Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base], which scrambles jets to investigate. The UFO approaches the
tower and hovers in pendulum-like motions directly above it. The interceptors give chase, but the UFO disappears at an incredible speed. The Greater Cincinnati Airport also tracks unidentified blips on radar. To his surprise, Stringfield obtains clearance to write about these sightings in CRIFO Orbit. But when he tries to interest the Cincinnati newspapers, they are not interested. A Wright-Patterson AFB spokesperson denies the incident to the press and claims to know nothing about Stringfield’s relationship with ADC. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1955-July-Sept-15.pdf

1987 August 23 — 2:00–3:00 a.m. A witness sees a circular, white object west of Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary, flying slowly to the north. A thin, orange-colored light beam sweeps from it several times from west to east. Suddenly it “jumps” with tremendous speed from one place to another and remains stationary, still sweeping its light beam for at least 30 minutes. Then it suddenly disappears.

AUGUST 22nd

1909 August 22 — Evening. Residents of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, watch a mystery airplane that emits a large puff of smoke. It descends and flies off to the north.

1924 August 22 — Mars enters an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before. In the US, a National Radio Silence Day is promoted during a 36-hour period in August 21–23, with all radios quiet for 5 minutes on the hour, every hour, just in case the Martians take the opportunity to communicate with Earth. At the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., a radio receiver is lifted 1.9 miles above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a
wavelength between 8 and 9 kilometers, using a “radio photo message continuous transmission machine” recently invented by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins of Washington. The program is led by retired astronomer David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Edward Walter Eberle, with William F. Friedman (US Army chief cryptographer), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages. The device records on paper images consisting of a “fairly regular arrangement of dots and dashes along one side” and on the other “at almost evenly spaced intervals … curiously jumped groups each taking the forms of a crudely drawn human face.” Todd tells a reporter, “It may not be a message from Mars, but if it isn’t from Mars, where is it from?” Astronomer Frederick E. Fowle of the Smithsonian thinks they are “distubances introduced by solar or terrestrial causes not yet understood.” Other scientists suggest the images are caused by static discharge from a passing trolley car, malfunctioning radio equipment, or the natural symphonic radio waves produced by Jupiter.

1946 August 22 — The Norwegian General Staff issues a memorandum to the press asking it not to mention any ghost rockets seen over the country and to pass on all reports to the military Intelligence Department. In Sweden, the ban is limited to any mention of where the rockets are seen to land or explode.

1946 August 22 — 3:00 p.m. Photographer Gösta Skog takes a color film of a ghost rocket at Getå, 100 miles south of Stockholm, Sweden. The cigar-shaped object appears out of a cloud at 3,000 feet, trailing exhaust. The film turns
out to be overexposed.

1946 August 22 — Director of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg writes a top secret memo to President Truman via Adm. William D. Leahy, stating that the “weight of evidence” points to Peenemünde (which has become a Soviet naval base), East Germany, as the origin of the ghost rockets, and that a US military attaché in Moscow has been told by a “key Swedish Air Officer” [Wennerström] that radar course-plotting leads to the conclusion that Peenemünde is the launch site. CIG speculates that the missiles are extended-range developments of V-1s being aimed for the Gulf of Bothnia for test purposes and “do not overfly Swedish territory specifically for intimidation; self-destruct by small demolition charge or burning.” http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron2.htm

1947 August 22 — Col. Robert Taylor III, Collection Branch of Army Air Force Intelligence, summarizes the findings of Lt. Col. Garrett’s investigations of UFOs in a letter to Gen. Curtis LeMay, Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development. Taylor requests any information on AAF projects that might give rise to such UFO reports. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1947-Aug-1-Dec-31-SN.pdf

1952 August 22 — George G. Carey, CIA assistant director for operations, writes a memo to Chadwell on “USSR and Satellite Mentions of Flying Saucers” that reviews mentions of UFOs in the Soviet press during the past two years. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000015342.pdf

1952 August 22 — A. Ray Gordon, project officer of the CIA’s Physics and Electronics Branch, provides a briefing document explaining the “Air Force Stand on ‘Flying Saucers’” to CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, who then briefs President Truman on the CIA UFO study group’s reports at his regular Friday intelligence briefing. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005516118.pdf

1952 August 22 — 11:48 p.m. Two Air Force jets chase a yellowish light in the sky over Elgin, Illinois, but it blinks out when they start closing in on it. The blink-out is also observed by D. C. Scott, supervisor of the Chicago Filter Center’s ground observers in Elgin. The light reappears and ascends rapidly in the sky after the planes go back.

1952 August 22–23 — Evening. Lyman Streeter sees unusual lights near Winslow, Arizona, and hears strange signals on his ham radio. Not long afterward, Lyman, his wife, and Alfred C. Bailey hear a mysterious code coming through the air itself. Eventually, at 2:00 a.m., a Morse Code-like message comes through the radio from Regga of Mars and Zo and Nah-9 from Neptune. Zo refers to Affa from Uranus, who thinks earth is too evil. He also warns them that the evil Orion Solar System is coming to earth in a “square star body.” Williamson arrives from Prescott on August 23.

1956 August 22 — 3:40 p.m. A man named Sheetz and another civilian in a car chases a 50-foot, black, bell-shaped object bearing two bright, white lights at the top several miles east of Naval Air Station Cecil Field, near Jacksonville, Florida. Their engine stalls when the object hovers 10 feet away. The underside resembles a disc with fins. When a jet takes off from the airfield, the object shoots out of sight almost instantly. The car battery is completely dead. Noise from the object compares to a helicopter, but there is no helicopter in the area. http://www.nicap.org/570827cecil_dir.htm

1956 August 22 — 8:50–11:59 p.m. Radars on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, first report 2–3 objects on an easterly heading at 800 mph. Approximately 2 hours later, four objects appear and orbit over the location. About 90 minutes later, the tracks fade. http://www.nicap.org/560822bornholm_dir.htm

1961 August 22 — Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter signs a NICAP letter to Congress urging “immediate congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about UFOs, including accidental war and the Russians falsely claiming UFOs are Soviet weapons.

1967 August 22–31 — Low, Roach, and Hynek attend the XIIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague. Low wastes an opportunity to meet with Charles Bowen in London and instead goes to Loch Ness “because neither the Loch Ness monster nor UFOs exist.” http://www.project1947.com/shg/articles/swordscc.html

1968 August 22 — 5:40 p.m. Capt. Walter Gardin and Capt. Gordon W. Smith are flying over Zanthus, Western Australia, at 8,000 feet in a Piper Navajo single-engine airplane when they see a large cigar-shaped object surrounded by five smaller ones. The formation maintains a constant angle from their own flight path for more than 10 minutes, while they are flying at 224 mph. The large object then opens up its center and the smaller objects fly to and from the larger object. Ground air control reports no known air traffic in the area. At this point the radio fails at all frequencies until the objects fly away.

1969 August 22 — The National Amateur Astronomers Association hosts an open forum in Denver, “Science and the UFO,” with presentations by James A. Harder, Leo Sprinkle, J. Allen Hynek, David Saunders, James McDonald, and Frank Salisbury. When asked how many of the 500 people assembled have had a UFO sighting, about 75 hands go up.

1978 August 22 — 7:03 a.m. Four men are driving in a carpool from Moscow, Pennsylvania, to work at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Coolbaugh Township on I-380. They watch a small circular “cloud” descend suddenly in the south. It changes to a bright silver and hovers, rocking from side to side. It now looks solid and metallic. It rises slightly and flies off to the southeast at an estimated 800–900 mph.

1989 August 22 — 2:40 p.m. A circular, flashing light is in view for about 5 minutes near Sunderland, UK. At first it is stationary, but then it moves rapidly upward, leaving a hole in a cloud that then glows red.

AUGUST 21st

1946 August 21 — The Norwegian General Staff issues a memorandum to the press asking it not to mention any ghost rockets seen over the country and to pass on all reports to the military Intelligence Department. In Sweden, the ban is limited to any mention of where the rockets are seen to land or explode.

1952 August 21 — 10:10 p.m. Ground Observer Corps Supervisor D. C. Scott spots a yellowish-whitte light flying in the sky at 2,000 feet northeast of Elgin, Illinois. Several times it rises to 5,000 feet in three minutes, hovers, then descends again. Scott alerts Capt. Everett A. Turner at the Chicago Filter Center, who tells him to call again when the light settles down. After one hour and 23 minutes the light begins to hover, Scott calls Turner again, and Turner has at least one F-86 Sabre jet scrambled from O’Hare Airport. The pilot makes four passes between 10,000 and 2,000 feet. On the fourth pass, it heads directly toward the light, which blinks out.

1955 August 21–22 — About 7:00 p.m. Billy Ray Taylor goes into the backyard of the Elmer “Lucky” Sutton farmhouse 7 miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and sees a bright object come from the south-southwest, pass over, and descend into a gully about 500 feet north and about 35-40 feet lower elevation. Glennie Lankford and 6 other adults (Elmer Sutton, Vera Sutton, John Charley Sutton, Alene Sutton, June Taylor, O. P. Baker) plus 3 children (Charlton, Lonnie, and Mary Lankford), see several gremlin-like creatures float down from trees and approach the house from the dark. They are about 3 feet high with roundish heads, elephantine ears, slit-like mouths extending ear to ear, huge and wide-set eyes, no visible necks, and long arms ending in clawed hands. They wear glowing silver clothing. When they run, they drop on all fours. When one of them approaches the house, Sutton and Taylor fire shotguns through the window screen, scoring a direct hit. The creature is knocked over, but gets up and scuttles off. Taylor walks out the door and one of the creatures grabs at his head. This activity continues the greater part of the night and includes heavy gunfire at times. Sutton fires point blank at it, knocking it from the roof, but it just “floats down.” At about 11:00 p.m. they run out of ammunition, and the entire group flees in terror in two cars and drives at high speed into Hopkinsville to report the incident to the police. A state patrolman leaves the Shady Oaks restaurant 3 miles north of Hopkinsville in a car to respond to the call and sees several meteor-like objects streaking over him sounding like artillery fire. He sees two in a series looking like meteors coming from the southwest, headed towards Kelly from the direction of Fort Campbell, a US Army installation. City, county, state, and military police and reporters drive out to the Sutton farm to investigate from 11:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. The UFO entities return at about 2:30 a.m. Glennie Lankford is trying to get to sleep when she sees one outside her window stretching its claw-like hands up ot the screen. Elmer Sutton again shoots at them without effect. The last one is seen at about 5:15 a.m. Clark writes that investigations by “police, Air Force officers from nearby Fort Campbell, and civilian ufologists found no evidence of a hoax”; however, Brian Dunning reports that “the claim that Air Force investigators showed up the next day at Mrs. Lankford’s house has been published a number of times by later authors, but I could find no corroborating evidence of this.” Dunning also observes that “the four military police who accompanied the police officers on the night of the event were from an Army base, not an Air Force base.” Skeptic Joe Nickell notes that the family could have misidentified great horned owls, which are nocturnal, fly silently, have yellow eyes, and aggressively defend their nests. He thinks Taylor and Sutton were drinking heavily. Meteor sightings also occurred at the time that could explain Billy Ray Taylor’s claim that he saw “a bright light streak across the sky and disappear beyond a tree line some distance from the house.” http://www.nicap.org/reports/550821hopkinsville_hendry.htm ; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1955-July-Sept-15.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%E2%80%93Hopkinsville_encounter

1978 August 21 — 5:30 p.m. A 33-year old housewife, in the company of her children, 8 and 10, watches a silver Frisbee-like object from their front porch 3 miles north of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Standing outdoors, they see the saucer in the southeast, much larger than a full moon would look, perhaps as large as a car. The Frisbee has a sharp outline and metallic appearance. No sound can be heard over the heavy traffic noise. According to the children, it then shoots over to the southwest in two seconds. Finally, it moves straight up out of sight in an instant. Duration is 5–8 minutes.

2004 August 21 — Three red lights hovering in a triangular formation are seen by several witnesses in Tinley Park and Oak Forest, Illinois. Further observations take place on October 31, 2004; October 1, 2005; and once again on October 31, 2006. The lights are captured on video by some witnesses. The video evidence suggests that the lights keep the geometrical shape and move as if they are attached to each other through a dark object. The incident is examined in a Dateline NBC episode on May 18, 2008, and in the episode “Invasion Illinois” of the television series UFO Hunters that premiers on The History Channel on October 29, 2008.

AUGUST 20th

1829 August 20 — 11:00 p.m. A man on the York Road east of Leeds, UK, sees a moon-like object split into two halves, the upper half of which gives off an apparent shaft of light. He sees two human figures visible to the waist, one of which has a red cloth around its head. The object is visible for more than one hour and is seen by others, during which time a cloud passes in front of it.

1946 August 20 — Two US experts on aerial warfare, aviation legend General Jimmy Doolittle and British Group Captain Douglas Bader, and General David Sarnoff, president of RCA, arrive in Stockholm, Sweden, ostensibly on private business, and independently of each other. The official explanation is that Doolittle, who is now vice-president of the Shell Oil Company, is inspecting Shell branch offices in Europe, while Sarnoff, a former member of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s London staff, is studying the market for radio equipment. However, the story indicates that the Chief of the Swedish Defense Staff, Col. C. R. Kempf, makes no secret that he “was extremely interested in asking the two generals’ advice and, if possible, would place all available reports before them.” However, Doolittle denies the correlation to Barry Greenwood in 1984, and researchers have found no evidence to support a collaboration. http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron2.htm; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1947 August 20 — An Anglo-American intelligence team releases a report on secret German weapons. Foo-fighters are said to be caused by a rocket-propelled plane launched straight up from the ground, intercepting Allied bomber formations by firing a spray of rocket shells from the nose. The pilot then parachutes back to the ground, a chute opens on the rocket, and it is recovered for re-use.

1949 August 20 —10:45 p.m. Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, his wife, and mother-in-law see a formation of rectangular bluish-green lights at Las Cruces, New Mexico, for about 3 seconds. http://www.nicap.org/490820lascruces_dir.htm

1950 August 20 — An FBI informant meets with George Adamski at Alice Wells’s restaurant, the Palomar Gardens Café, south of Mount Palomar, California. In addition to the standard flying saucer tales, Adamski mentions that the Federal Communications Commission has established contact with people from other planets who apparently have a communist economic system. He also predicts that Russia will dominate the world for the next 1,000 years.

1952 August 20 — The CIA/OSI UFO study group briefs CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, who then orders the preparation of a National Security Council Intelligence Directive for submission to the NSC stating the need for a UFO investigation. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020008-2.pdf

1952 August 20 — Air Defense Command radar at Congaree AFB [now McEntire Joint National Guard Base], southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, tracks a target traveling more than 4,000 mph some 60 miles from the base. http://www.nicap.org/520820congaree_dir.htm

1953 August 20 — 9:05 p.m. The crew of a TB-29 sees a grayish oval object near Castle AFB [now Castle Airport Aviation and Development Center], northeast of Atwater, California. The UFO makes four passes at the plane, then dives vertically as if it consists of two objects. http://www.nicap.org/530820castleafb_dir.htm

1954 August 20 — Contactee Dorothy Martin of Oak Park, Illinois, and Charles and Lilian Laughead of Detroit send out a 7-page press release announcing that a geological disaster will cause great environmental changes in North America and Europe. It warns that December 20 will be the last available date for evacuation, as a great flood will strike on December 21. Martin and her followers hope to board a landed flying saucer before doom falls.

1954 August 20 — Morning. Edith Jacobsen, 2, and Åsta Solvang, 32, are on a blueberry-picking trip to Øyfjellet, near Mosjøen, Norway, with their uncle, Halvdan Jacobsen. The two sisters wander off to a fen when suddenly they see a man in the distance. They approach him and he smiles and stretches out his hand, but he only brushes Edith’s palm with it. He has long hair with a natural wave, a dark complexion, and a tight-fitting suit with a wide belt. He begins to talk but they can’t understand him. It does not sound like Norwegian, English, German, Spanish, French, or Russian. He takes out a “little mirror” from a pocket and with something like a pencil draws circles, apparently representing planets. He finally indicates he wants the women to accompany him and he takes them to a landed disc in a clearing. It is gray-blue and looks like two giant pot lids put together. He makes a sign to not come too close, then he opens a hatch on the top, crawls in, and shuts the door. The sisters hear a faint humming, and the UFO rises while rotating on its own axis.

1957 August 20 — 11:28 a.m. Shinichi Takeda takes a photo of a silvery disc near Enoshima Beach, Kanagawa, Japan. The object is also seen by his sister, who calls his attention to it. It gives off a brilliant glow at an estimated altitude of 3,000–4,000 feet, traveling north to south. The object makes a 90° left turn, speeds up, and disappears in the clouds. The photo shows capsule-shaped image near bank of cumulus clouds. A few minutes later, 15 people on the beach report a similar object that passes over at high speed. http://www.nicap.org/570820japan_dir.htm

1963 August 20 — 9:30 p.m. Italian President Antonio Segni’s personal driver encounters a UFO near the entrance of the Castel Porziano Presidential Estate in Rome. When he sees a metallic domed disc with portholes moving in front of him in the driveway ahead, the driver stops the Fiat 2300 immediately. The UFO, about 65 feet diameter, passes a few feet above the car, making a hissing noise and causing the body to vibrate and the instruments to go crazy, then reverses course and passes over the car again with the same effect. It then tilts 90° and darts away to the west. It leaves behind a smell of heated metal.

1966 August 20 — Afternoon. Some boys looking for a lost kite on the Morro do Vintém in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, discover the bodies of two dead males and report them to the authorities. The Morro do Vintém is a hill with difficult terrain, and the police are unable to reach the bodies until August 21. When a small team of police and firefighters arrive, they encounter an odd scene: the bodies are resting next to each other, partly covered by grass. Each one is wearing a formal suit, a lead eye mask, and a waterproof coat. There are no signs of trauma or struggle. Next to the corpses, police find an empty water bottle and a packet containing two wet towels. A small notebook is also identified, on which were written the cryptic instructions, “16:30 be at the specified location. 18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask.” The two men are identified as Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana, two electronic technicians from Campos dos Goytacazes. Following an investigation, police reconstruct a plausible narrative of the men’s last days. On August 17, Cruz and Viana leave Campos dos Goytacazes saying that they needed to purchase some materials for work (although they tell others they are on a secret mission). The two men then board a bus to Niterói and arrive at 2:30 p.m. Evidence shows that the waterproof coats were purchased at a shop there, and one bottle of water from a local bar. Upon being interviewed, the waitress from the bar described Miguel as “very nervous,” and noticed he frequently checked his
watch. That is the last time they are known to have been seen alive; it is presumed they go directly from the bar to the spot where they were discovered. One theory revolves around the testimony of a friend of the two men, who claims that they are members of a group of “scientific spiritualists” who are apparently attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirits using psychedelic drugs. Believing that such an encounter would be accompanied by blinding light, the men cut metal masks to shield their eyes and may have died of drug overdoses. This account is corroborated by the esoteric diary entry found at the scene and by mask-making materials and literature concerning spirits found at the men’s homes. In April 1980, Jacques Vallée locates the exact spot where the bodies were found and notes that no vegetation is growing there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case

1975 August 20 — Evening. Police stations in the area of Albany, New York, receive numerous calls about UFO sightings. State Trooper Michael Morgan is dispatched to the scene of one of the sightings, where a police detective is observing a blimp-sized object hovering at 500 feet over Lake Saratoga. As the reddish, glowing UFO flashes on and off, two smaller objects approach and merge with it. Air traffic controllers at Albany Airport locate the object on a radar scanner. After a few minutes, the two smaller objects break away and leave in the direction from which they had come. The first object moves toward the two policemen who see a brilliant white light shining from the center of its base as it passes over them. Silently, the craft turns and moves away slowly. Suddenly, the UFO disappears. After tracking the target for 45 minutes, the radar operators lose contact with it. However, within a short time, they receive a call from the pilot of a military airplane who warns them that he has just seen a red fireball 1,000 feet above him headed toward the airport. The controllers locate the object just as it enters the 50-mile range of one of their radarscopes. The anti-clutter device is thrown to ascertain whether or not the blip is a radar range, but the image still comes through clearly. The controllers estimate its speed to be 3,000 mph. About five miles outside Albany, the target vanishes. The controllers speculate that it has either accelerated to a speed of 5,000 mph or has executed a seemingly impossible vertical manoeuvre at high speed. During the same time as the Albany sightings, large discs and bright lights are seen at low altitude less than 50 miles north over the South Glens Falls area and as far north as Lake George. The case is investigated by Ernest Jahn, who contacts the Smithsonian Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They are unable to give any explanation for the sightings.

1976 August 20 — Brothers Jim and Jack Weiner, with friends Charles Foltz and Charles Rak, claim they are abducted by aliens during a camping trip near Allagash, Maine. According to the four men, hypnotic regression allows them to recall being taken aboard a circular UFO and being “probed and tested by four-fingered beings with almond-shaped eyes and languid limbs.” In a later interview by the St. John Valley Times, Charles Rak changes his story, saying he did see strange lights during the camping trip, but the abduction part of the story is a total fabrication, and he went along with the narrative for financial gain. The other three members of the group stand by the abduction story. According to Jim Weiner, “Jack, Charlie, and I, after all these years, are still in agreement with the Eagle Lake event as we (three) remember it. We also accept the results of the hypnotic regression sessions and subsequent polygraph tests as supportive of an abduction scenario.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allagash_abductions

1978 August 20 — 7:30 p.m. A 64-year-old security guard is on patrol in downtown Toledo, Ohio, looking at a “large plane” approaching from the north. As it passes overhead at a uniform speed, about 1,500–2,000 feet up, it is seen as a cigar with small brackets. It is dull silver, distinctly outlined, and twice the angular size of the full moon. It then continues its straight path southbound to the horizon.

AUGUST 19th

1946 August 19 — The US military attaché in Moscow reports on the visit of Maj. Stig Wennerström of the Swedish Air Force, who reveals that radar indicates the ghost rocket launch site is at Peenemünde, Germany. The rockets appear to be radio-controlled, carry no warheads, are self-destructive, and are plotted over a range of 620 miles. Sometimes they follow zigzag courses.

1947 August 19 — FBI memo to D. M. Ladd from E. G. Fitch on “Flying Discs” mentions SAC Reynolds’s conversation with Lt. Col. George Garrett, re: “there were objects seen which somebody in the Government knows all about.” http://www.nicap.org/docs/fbi_081947doc.pdf

1947 August 19 — 9:30 p.m. H. H. Hedstrom (executive director of the Twin Falls Housing Authority) and three policemen (Richard A. Frazier, H. E. Roundtree, and Richard Scott) in Twin Falls, Idaho, see a formation of 12 objects flying in diamond formation at terrific speed.

1949 August 19 — Two prospectors, Buck Fitzgerald and Mase Garney, report that a flying saucer crashed near them in Death Valley, California. Two little men jump out and start running. The prospectors chase them over a sand dune, but lose them. https://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1949-death-valley-california-ufo-crash/ ; https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1949-08-19-usa-deathvalley.htm

1952 August 19 — The CIA/OSI study group prepares an internal 6-page document of its findings. It has made a study of the Soviet press that shows “not one report or comment” about UFOs, which indicates official censorship. It perceives a danger that the Russians might try to infiltrate civilian UFO groups (such as Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles) or add UFO disinformation during a nuclear attack: “We give Russia the capability of delivering an air attack against us, yet at any given moment now, there may be a dozen official unidentified sightings plus many unofficial.” It briefs CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith on August 20. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020012-7.pdf

1952 August 19 — 2:38 p.m. Ground Observer Corps observer Albert Lathrop sees two objects shaped like fat bullets flying straight, level, and fast over Red Bluff, California.

1952 August 19 — 8:00 p.m. An oval disc is seen above Boron Air Force Station [now closed] in Boron, California. Two jet fighters are guided into the area by Capt. Ralph J. Borgerson at the base, but the object speeds away to the east as they close in. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 19 — About 10:00 p.m. Scoutmaster D[unham] S[anborn] “Sonny” DesVergers allegedly stands underneath a UFO and is zapped into semiconsciousness by some kind of red flare that comes from a hatch in the object (and burns his cap as well) on the edge of the Everglades south of West Palm Beach, Florida. An area of flattened and burned grass is found after the event. Karl Pflock thinks it is a hoax, but Jerry Clark isn’t 100% sure. http://www.nicap.org/bhoax.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/scoutmas.htm ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug-SN.pdf; https://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/thescoutmasterstale.html

1953 August 19 — A small, fast-moving, ricocheting fireball rips a foot-wide hole through a metal billboard at Middlestone Avenue and Front Street in East New Haven, Connecticut. IFSB investigator August C. Roberts and Joseph Barbieri steal a piece of the sign during an investigation by Naval Ordnance personnel. IFSB sends the sample to Col. Robert B. Emerson, an Army physicist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who contacts friends at Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee to have it analyzed, but nothing else is heard of this sample. APRO arranges for a separate analysis of the deposits on the sign performed by Anderson Laboratories in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Chicago Spectrographic Service Laboratory. They determine that the fragments consist of copper and copper oxide and are not meteoritic. Michael D. Swords suggests that Roberts’s retrieval of the metal fragments would have attracted the attention of federal officials. http://www.nicap.org/newhaven530819dir.htm

1965 August 19 — 8:20–9:00 p.m. Harold Butcher, 16, is milking the cows in his father’s barn in Cherry Creek, New York, and listening to radio station WKBW. Just outside, a 3-year old bull is tied by its nose to a metal pipe. Harold hears the bull make a noise “like I have never heard come from an animal before.” Looking out the window, he sees the animal is bending the pipe. Simultaneously, he sees a metallic-looking, football-shaped UFO about 50 feet long and approximately 20 feet thick hovering just above the trees an estimated 450 feet from the barn. Slowly, the object descends behind a maple tree, emitting a red vapor from around its edges and a “beep-beep” sound. Meanwhile, the radio is emitting static, even though WKBW usually has a clear signal. Harold calls the house on an intercom, then runs outside. As he approaches the bull, the UFO rises and moves behind some clouds “as fast as a snap of my fingers” emitting red vapor toward the ground, then bounces back to the ship as it hovers about 10 feet in the air. The noise also increases to a level approximating a sonic boom as it goes up. As the UFO disappears, the clouds turn green. Inside, the boy’s mother, Mrs. William Butcher, notes that there is “definite interference” in her radio reception. Harold’s brother, Robert, also goes outside and the two boys see that the UFO has reappeared, this time hovering over a pine grove. It ascends again, emitting the red vapor and turning the clouds green. Others in the house include William Butcher Jr. and Kathleen Brougham, a friend. They do not see the object. It returns twice at 8:45 and 9:00 p.m., finally disappearing to the southwest. Trooper E. J. Haas and a fellow officer arrive on the scene shortly thereafter. As they all walk out to inspect the area of the initial sighting, they notice a pungent odour. Harold and the young daughter suffer from upset stomachs. Mrs. Butcher says the cows produce only one can of milk that evening, as opposed to their usual two and a half cans. Harold discovers a purple, oily-smelling liquid and gives a sample of it to the state police, who turn it over to Capt. James A. Dorsey and five others from Niagara Falls Air Force Base [now Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station], who come to investigate the report the following afternoon. When NICAP investigator Jeffrey Gow arrives on the scene, he notices the foot-tall grass in the area “seemed to be bent over in long curved sweeps.” Radar targets are picked up between 8:00–8:30 p.m. by an AN/FPS-6 Long Range Height Finder Radar of the 763rd Radar Squadron at Lockport Air Force Station [now closed] near Shawnee, New York. The target is sighted near the upper limit of the radar. http://www.nicap.org/650819cherrycreek_dir.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/650819cherrycreek2_dir.htm

1966 August 19 — 4:50 p.m. US border patrolman [or ATF agent?] Donald E. Flickinger, in the process of taking a prisoner to Canada, sees a silvery domed disc floating down the side of a hill near Donnybrook, North Dakota, about 10 feet off the ground. It moves across a valley and climbs to 100 feet, hovers over a reservoir, then appears to land in a field 250 feet away. It tilts on edge and rises into the clouds at high speed. The officer finds some odd indentations in the field.

AUGUST 18th

1783 August 18 — 9:15–9:30 p.m. An unusually bright bolide is observed in the British Isles on a clear, dry night. Analysis indicates that the meteor has entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the North Sea, before passing over the east coast of Scotland, England, and the English Channel; it finally breaks up, after a passage within the atmosphere of around 1,000 miles, over southwestern France or northern Italy. Perhaps the most prominent witness is Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian natural philosopher who happens to be among a group of people on the terrace at Windsor Castle at the time the meteor appears.

1893 August 18 — Sunrise. People living near the small hamlet of Leslie in Cumberland County, Kentucky, notice that the sun has a peculiar color. Thousands of small discs, seemingly about the size of a wagon wheel, appear in the sky, all of them in motion. They appear round in shape from far away, but when closer to the ground they change to triangles, squares, or odd forms. Their colors vary: Some are bright red, others green or black, but when they are
close to the ground they are all a deep purple color. All are silent. The phenomenon lasts about one hour, during which time the villagers fear it is judgment day.

1909 August 18 — 2:30 a.m. Four men (Capt. Edward P. Sisson, Ernest T. Newton, Prentice Lanphear, and Edward M. Knapp) at the Coast Guard life-saving station on the south side of Fishers Island, New York, see a winged airship 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Moving swiftly against the wind, it moves in from the northeast, its engines whirring and a dazzling white light at its head. Two dark figures can be seen in the center of the object. Visible for 3 minutes, the object moves off to the west.

1946 August 18 — 8:00 or 10:00 p.m. An aerial object like a 9-foot cigar is seen moving slowly on the north side of Copenhagen, Denmark. It explodes with extraordinary force. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1949 August 18 — LaPaz and USAF scientists meet with William D. Crozier to find out about his July 25 dust collection in Socorro, New Mexico. Crozier says he thinks the copper particles may have come from a campus building, although samples from the open country contain the same particles. LaPaz notes that copper is extremely rare in meteorites, although it might explain the yellow-green color of the fireballs. He suggests that further air and ground samples be taken in areas where the fireballs are seen.

1958 August 18 — 7:05 or 7:10 p.m. Typewriter repairman Alex Donald Chisholm is at home at 21950 Cunningham Ave., Warren, Michigan, with Walter Moilanion and his wife and possibly a young daughter, when he sees a light much brighter than Venus in the vicinity of a flight of four military aircraft. He watches the object through 8×30 mm Japanese artillery-observer field glasses. It looks to be a Saturn-shaped grayish object like a “fried egg in pan.” Later it flips over, and another more elongated ring can be seen surrounding it. The object is about 60 feet long and is stationary for 5-8 minutes. However, the object is probably a Skyhook balloon launched from the University of Minnesota on August 17. http://www.nicap.org/docs2/1958_08_18_US_MI_Warren_Chisholm.pdf

1965 August 18 — 9:50 p.m. Michael S. Henry and another college student are driving 3 miles south of Noblesville, Indiana, when a large red lighted object swoops down on their car. The radio and ignition go dead. The UFO looks like a top, with a large, gray cone and a flat or slightly domed top.

1967 August 18 — A CIA “Report on Conversations with Soviet Scientists on Subject of Unidentified Flying Objects in the USSR” summarizes interviews with unnamed Russian astronomers that may possibly have been conducted by members of the Condon commission. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005515701.pdf

1968 August 18 — 1:20 p.m. Technician Emil Barnea, his girlfriend Zamfira Matea, and two other friends are picnicking in a forest near Baciu, not far from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, when they see a round, metallic, luminous object moving slowly through the sky. Its brilliance increases and decreases as it maneuvers around for 2 minutes. Barnea succeeds in taking four photos of the object before it suddenly accelerates and shoots upwards.

1985 August 18 — Four civilian pilots are flying a Cessna on a southerly course at 3,200 feet altitude near Söderhamn, Gävleborg, Sweden, when they spot a missile like object, some 20 feet long, going in the opposite direction. They see it is a metallic missile with steering fins in the back. It occasionally changes its course according to the terrain. The pilot dives down a bit to follow it, but they can’t keep up. The Swedish military spends 6 months trying to identify it.

AUGUST 17th

1936 August 17 — A metallic disc with a diameter of 33–40 feet is seen flying soundlessly near Venice, Italy. It has windows and alternating white and red lights. Two fighters from a nearby air base attempt to intercept it but cannot reach it. After maneuvering for an hour and passing above Mestre, Veneto, it appears more like a torpedo-shaped object. Two other smaller, domed discs are also seen following it. A report on the incident is sent to Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.

1944 August 17 — The Allied command creates the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS), charged in part with investigating the strange balls of fire.

1947 August 17 —A forest ranger at a fire lookout tower on Mt. Josephine, Skagit County, Washington, observes an object shaped like a huge clam that appears to fall tipped at an angle northeast of the fire tower. It slows to a stop, levels off, and floats “leisurely as if suspended by a cord” for a few minutes and finally moves off to the southeast with ever increasing speed. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1947-Revision.pdf

1949 August 17 — Lincoln LaPaz submits the fifth of a series of reports on “anomalous luminous phenomena.” He notes that “Many of the green fireballs now appearing descend in nearly vertical paths, whereas, in earlier months almost all of the green fireballs observed moved almost horizontally. There appears to be a concentration of New Mexico incidents near weekends, especially on Sunday and near the hour of 8:00.” https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1949-July-Dec.pdf

1951 August 17 — 11:30 a.m. Otto Bock, a German scientist with a specialty in optics who came to the US as part of Operation Paperclip, observes a high-altitude, metallic object through his 20x telescope for about 4 hours. He says the sighting is confirmed by four other persons. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1951a.htm

1959 August 17 — The automatic keys at the power station in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil, suddenly disconnect power to all four trunk lines. A technician at a substation 45 miles away reports that all the keys disconnected as a UFO passes overhead, traveling toward the main station along the power lines. The chief engineer resets all the keys but they turn off again. Outside he sees a bright object approaching at high speed. As soon as it passes, the entire system returns to normal. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1959-July-Sept.pdf

1962 August 17–19 — Evening. Walking home, diamond prospector Rivalino Mafra da Silva sees two small beings, about three feet tall, digging a hole near Duas Pontes, 17 miles north of Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil. On August 19, Mafra da Silva and his sons are in bed when they are awakened by sounds and see a shadowy figure, apparently floating in the room. In the morning, he and his son Raimundo see two humming balls floating outside. They merge into one larger ball that moves toward Rivalino, enveloping him in yellow smoke. Raimundo says: “Then the yellow smoke dissolved. The balls were gone. The ground below was clean as if the dust had been removed by a big broom.” He tells his story to Lt. Wilson Lisbõa, chief of police at Diamantina, who conducts a search for 10 days. Only a few drops of blood are found. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1962-08-17-20-brazil-duaspontes.htm

1978 August 17 — Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia William Briggs asks Peter Gersten of Ground Saucer Watch to identify broadly all categories of UFO documents to enable the CIA to search for all its UFO records. Based on a draft by Brad Sparks, Gersten prepares a stipulation that requests the CIA to conduct a reasonable search of 22 CIA component branches. US District Court Judge John H. Pratt makes the order a binding one, giving the CIA until mid-December to complete the task.

1980 August 17 — 1:15 a.m. Security guard Phil Battle is driving his truck in the parking lot of the Teledyne-Ohio Steel plant in Lima, Ohio, and sees an unusual bright light in the sky. He steps out and watches a round, silvery form about 270 feet away. It has little holes on the surface, a flashing yellow light, and white floodlights all around it. It hovers for about 5 minutes, moving back and forth. Battle’s CB radio does not work when he tries to alert others. Suddenly a yellow light shoots out at Battle, knocking him back against his truck, scarring his knee and hurting his back and kidneys. The beam also reddens his left eye. The UFO then takes off. He and other guard look for the object and see a light about 1,200 feet to the north, slightly larger than the moon, which drifts westward after 15–20 seconds.

1986 August 17 — Afternoon. For several hours, witnesses throughout central Chile see distinct, luminous spots in the sky, sometimes motionless, sometimes moving slowly. Television crews film the objects, astronomers in Santiago photograph them, and the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport tracks them on radar. Early explanations by the Chilean Air Force center on weather or research balloons, but a Chilean Civil Aeronautics report states that the sightings remain an enigma.

AUGUST 16th

1946 August 16 — Col. L. H. Johnson, US naval attaché in Stockholm, transmits a “Top Secret Report R334-46 of 13 August 1946 Subject: SWEDEN Guided Missiles Rocket Sightings Over Sweden.” It concludes: “No tangible evidence to date as to nature or origin of rockets reported over Sweden, although Swedish Defense Staff insists that they are rockets.” http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron2.htm

1946 August 16 — A missile produces an enormous explosion over Malmö, Sweden, that shakes or breaks many windows. Some witnesses think they can see fragments of the object falling to earth. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1953 August 16 — Flying Saucers International holds the first UFO convention at the Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, featuring contactee speakers.

1954 August 16 — 5:00 p.m. A green ball is seen in the sky over Tananarive [now Antananarivo], Madagascar, and disappears behind a hill. It reappears a minute later and flies over the higher part of Tananarive. When the object flies in front of them, some witnesses see a lentil-shaped device with a silvery metallic aspect enveloped in electric luminous gas. According to Jean-Luc Bruneau, inspector general at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, Gen. Charles de Gaulle is concerned about this sighting and quietly approves having a French study group involved with investigating UFO cases. http://www.ufocasebook.com/2010/madagascar1954.html

1955 August 16 — Early morning. Truck driver Ernest Suddard and his 13-year-old son are returning home to Bradford, West Yorks, UK, when their headlights light up a small figure in the street. It is 4 feet tall, dressed in skin-tight black clothes, and is hopping forward in a series of jerky movements. A circular, silvery object, perforated with holes, appears on the figure’s chest just below its throat. It approaches the truck then turns away abruptly into a passage. Suddard alerts the police, but they find nothing. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1955-July-Sept-15.pdf ; https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1955-08-16-uk-bradford.htm

1958 August 16 — Around 5:00 p.m. Several persons on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, watch a bright light descending. It comes to hover about 45 feet above their boat. It is saucer-shaped, about 39 feet in diameter, and has a cabin on top with several windows. It causes a noticeable current in the water. After several leaps in the air, it flies off at high speed.

1961 August 16 — George Hunt Williamson, now going by the name of Michel d’Obrenovic, arrives in Japan at the invitation of the Cosmic Brotherhood Association and its contactee leader Yusuke Matsumara.

1965 August 16 — 10:45 p.m.–12:20 a.m. A woman leaves her house on the northwest edge of Sedalia, Missouri, to drive to a drug store. As she is returning home, she sees an unusual figure in the ditch to her right. It turns and waves at her, then stumbles as it climbs out of the ditch. Something (a large bird?) flies up in the air a few feet from the car. She steps on the gas and goes home, where her husband asks her where she has been because it is now 12:25 a.m. In 1977, she undergoes hypnotic regression with hypnotist Ron Owen and recalls an abduction experience where she undergoes some type of examination. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1965-08-16-usa-sedalia.htm

1966 August 16 — The chief of the Australian Directorate of Public Relations writes to the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence requesting reconsideration of its decision to stop making summaries of UFO sightings reported to the Department of Air available to the public. DPR hopes the summaries would be useful in responding to public inquiries and thinks that restricting them will reinforce the theory that the government has something to hide. The summaries continue to be published erratically through the end of the 1970s.

1969 August 16 — 6:00 a.m. A farmer doing barnyard chores at La Serra d’Almos, Catalonia, Spain, glimpses a light more than half a mile away. He thinks someone’s car has stalled, so he walks over with his dog intending to help. But he finds a globe-shaped, glowing object hovering 3 feet above the ground. On the other side of it, he sees two creatures of an octopus-like appearance. Light-colored, 3 feet tall, they are running on “four or five legs” toward the UFO, which abruptly takes off. Reporters and UFO investigators find a considerable area of burned grass at the site. Those who visit the site shortly afterwards find their watches stop mysteriously.

1973 August 16 — Jan-Ove Sundberg sees a landed UFO in a cleared area above Foyers, Inverness, Scotland, on Loch Ness. Three human-shaped figures in gray coveralls emerge from some bushes and enter the craft, which then takes off. Sundberg snaps a photo, then contacts writer and monster researcher Frederick William “Ted” Holiday, who is looking for a UFO connection with the loch. However, Sundberg eventually confesses that he made up the story. http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2018/05/ted-holidays-final-days.html

1978 August 16 — Air traffic controllers at Gatwick Airport in West Sussex, UK, see a UFO but decline to say exactly what it is.

1981 August 16 — A huge object approaches the island of Cyprus. Radar at a Sovereign British Base, either Akrotiri or Dhekelia, track it at 30,000 feet going 900 mph. It comes to a sudden stop and hovers above the base for 45 minutes. Witnesses take many photos of a bright white triangle more than 700 feet long. Allegedly, the Ministry of Defence had sent an encrypted message to the base prior to the sighting, ordering a “complete stand-down of aircraft in the event that any strange ‘aerial phenomena’” are sighted. On August 17, a man and woman arrive at the base, stay for 6 hours, then leave with all the photos and other evidence. Shortly afterward, according to an informant, US and UK Air Force personnel meet at RAF Lakenheath in England to discuss the case.

2013 August 16 — 11:00 p.m. Two people camping on Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia are walking on the beach when they notice above them a low-flying triangular object with lights at each of its points. It is moving silently to the south toward Jacksonville, Florida. About 45 minutes later they see it through some trees from their campsite, again silent and heading south.

AUGUST 15th

1663 August 15 — 12:00 noon. The faithful gathered in a church in a village near Lake Zarobozero, Vologda Oblast, Russia, hear a loud noise outside and see a large ball of fire descend from the north and then head south following the lake, low over its surface. The fireball seems to measure about 140 feet across and has blue smoke issuing from its sides. Two fiery rays extend from its front part. Less than an hour later, a similar fireball reappears over the same lake. Moving from south to west, the object again disappears. It reappears a third time a short while later, this time larger than before, and stays over the lake for an hour and a half. Peasants in a boat try to get close to it, but the heat is too intense. The water of the lake is illuminated to a depth of 30 feet, and fish are seen swimming away from the object, which then flies off to the west.

1946 August 15 — Night. Several residents of the east side of Waterloo, Iowa, see an object buzzing rapidly around some trees. It gradually ascends, surrounded by a cloud of white vapor, and disappears high in the sky. One person called it “a great white bird; another, a bomb.” Mrs. Russell Lampman says that the object is “6 feet, 3 inches tall, like a large man, and rather rectangular in shape.” She and her husband watch it for an hour after it starts hovering about 20–25 feet above a nearby alley.

1947 August 15? — 9:30 p.m. Maj. Elmer H. Hammer of the 28th Bombardment Wing at Rapid City Army Air Base [now Ellsworth AFB] near Box Elder, South Dakota, sees 12 objects flying at 6,000–10,000 feet in a tight diamond formation at 300–400 mph. The objects level off at approximately 5,000 feet and make a gentle large-radius turn of about 110° to the right about 4 miles away. They start climbing at an angle of 30–40° and appear to accelerate rapidly in the climb. The objects are approximately 100 feet long and have a brilliant yellow-white luminous glow. http://www.nicap.org/470815rapidcity_dir.htm

1948 August 15 — Morning. Future ufologist Walter H. Andrus Jr., his wife Genevieve, and son Donald see four UFOs flying in formation east to west over downtown, Phoenix, Arizona. They simply vanish in sequence, then the first three reappear one at a time in the northwest where they pass out of sight to the west.

1950 August 15 — A top secret meeting on UFOs takes place at the Metropole Building on Northumberland Avenue in London. It is chaired by Hugh Young, deputy director of intelligence, and attended by representatives of the Secret Intelligence Service and Wing Commander Myles Formby of the Air Ministry’s technical intelligence branch. Young explains that Henry Tizard, chief scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defence, feels that reports of flying saucers should not be dismissed without investigation and has asked that a working party be set up to look into significant reports. RAF Fighter Command is advised that all future reports of aerial phenomena should go to the Flying Saucer Working Party. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1947-1959-SN.pdf

1952 August 15 — 4:20 a.m. Ground Oberver Corps observers in Davis, California, see a rainbow-colored, round object hovering in the air. Soon they notice eight more objects of a strange appearance. At 5:30 a.m., two more UFOs are seen, one moving west while the other moves east. The Air Force scrambles a F-94 jet interceptor to search the area at altitudes of 10,000–20,000 feet. The military claims the pilot can see nothing unusual, although the GOC spotters say that the UFOs and the jet are both visible in the sky at the same time and possibly at the same altitude. At 5:00 a.m., in Napa, California, GOC post observer Diane Robinson sights a “cigar-shaped silver thing” traveling at tremendous speed at 10,000 feet toward the southwest. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 15 — CIA operative Frederick C. Durant [and/or Ransom L. Eng] writes a top-secret draft memo for DCI Walter Bedell Smith on the OSI teams visit to Wright-Patterson AFB and a summary of its findings. It offers an analytical description of UFOs going back to the 1946 Scandinavian ghost rockets. It rules out the possibility of Russian secret weapons and mentions the sightings at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge at a time when the “background radiation count had risen inexplicably. Here we run out of even ‘blue yonder’ explanations that might be tenable, and, we still are left with numbers of incredible reports from credible observers.” Yet “even though we might admit that intelligent life may exist elsewhere and that space travel is possible, there is no shred of evidence to support this theory at present.” https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020012-7.pdf

1952 August 15 — RAAF Flight Lt. William H. Scott, chief test pilot of the Government Aircraft Factories, is flying a de Havilland Vampire jet between 35,000 and 36,000 feet near Rockhampton, Queensland. Looking east toward the coast, he sees a large, circular light at a lower elevation. It is the color of an ordinary incandescent light bulb. After about 60 seconds, 6–10 smaller lights break off from the main light, surrounding it for 2 minutes before disappearing. After another 2 minutes, the big light also disappears.

1956 August 15 —The RAND Corporation issues a top-secret summary of “Case Studies of Actual and Alleged Overflights, 1930–1953,” RM-1349, detailing more than 143 aircraft incidents in the Far East.

1960 August 15 — Air Force Information Policy Letter for Commanders, vol. 14, no.12, is issued by Office of the Secretary of Air Force. In “AF Keeping Watchful Eye on Aerospace,” it states, “There is a relationship between the Air Force’s interest in space surveillance and its continuous surveillance of the atmosphere near Earth for unidentified flying objects—‘UFOs.’”

1966 August 15 — Office of Scientific Intelligence Deputy Director Karl H. Weber writes to Col. Gerald E. Jorgensen, chief of the USAF Community Relations Division, that “We are most anxious that further publicity not be given to the information that the [Robertson] panel was sponsored by the CIA.” Weber notes that there is already a sanitized version available to the public.

1980 August 15 — UFO skeptic Philip Klass sends a letter to A. G. McNamara of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Ottawa, Canada, which serves as a repository for Canadian UFO reports for the Canadian National Research
Council. Klass characterizes New Brunswick ufologist Stanton Friedman as a snake oil salesman and UFO guru whose lectures are filled with falsehoods, disparaging his credentials, his ego, and his modus operandi. He warns McNamara that the astronomers at the institute will soon be the targets of Friedman’s coverup accusations.

1981 August 15 — 6:00 p.m. Twenty workers returning from the fields at the Forestry Commission Station of La Rochelle, 5.5 miles northeast of Mutare, Zimbabwe, see a ball of light moving around at a low level. Clifford Muchena is in charge of the group, and he watches the 5-foot fireball maneuver around the grounds then move up to an observation tower, entering through the top window before it bursts into flame. As Muchena is ringing a warning bell, he sees the fireball come back down the tower, go past him, and burst into flame again at an outbuilding. Muchena goes to douse the fire but stops when he sees three men wearing silver coveralls. The light is too bright to see clearly, and after it goes out the beings are gone. Women in the compound have seen the fireball and the entities and run out into the bush, thinking they are ghosts.

1985 August 15 — 4:05 p.m. Greek Olympic Airways Flight OA 132, piloted by Christos Stamulis, is flying from Zürich to Athens and is just passing the Swiss-Italian border at 25,000 feet when a wingless projectile passes 200–500 feet below them from left to right. The object is about 6 feet long, dark brown or black, and is coming from the Italian side of the border. Italian and Swiss military deny any tests.

AUGUST 14th

1914 August 14 — Afternoon. A large ball of fire sweeps over the southeast portion of Montpelier, Vermont, seen by employees of the C. P. Gill stone cutting plant near the Winooski River. It is accompanied by a loud noise. One man says the heat of the object has scorched his hands. The plant motor stops as the object passes over, and insulation from some electrical wires is found burned off.

1946 August 14 — The New York Times reports that Secretary of State Dean Acheson is “very much interested” in the ghost rockets. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1946 August 14 — 10:02 a.m. Swedish Air Force pilot Lieut. Gunnar Irholm and his signaler, Cpl. Möller, are flying a B-18A bomber at 650 feet 4 miles northeast of Malingsbo in central Sweden when they see a dark cigar-shaped object approaching on their left. It has no visible wings, rudders, lights, flame or projections of any type. It appears to follow the terrain at 370–430 mph, maintaining the same height, then vanishes into a storm cloud.

1947 August 14 — The first Gallup poll on UFOs shows that 90% of Americans have heard of flying saucers; 33% don’t know what they are, 39% consider them hoaxes or misidentifications, 16% consider them US or Russian secret weapons. The ETH is not mentioned. http://www.project1947.com/fig/gallup.htm

1947 August 14 — Shortly after 9:00 a.m. Italian artist and author Luigi Rapuzzi (who uses the pseudonym L. R. Johannis) is hiking along the left bank of the Torrente Chiarzò near Raveo, Udine, Italy, when he sees a vivid red, metallic, domed disc on the riverbank about 165 feet ahead. It is about 33 feet wide and embedded in a cleft in the rock about 20 feet above the stream. Looking around, he sees two “boys” on the edge of a grove of trees. He shouts at them and points to the object, walking toward them, but notices they are actually odd-looking dwarfs who are approaching him stiffly. They are about 3 feet tall and wearing dark blue coveralls with red collars, cuffs, and belts. Their greenish heads are covered in tight-fitting, brownish caps. He looks at them in astonishment for 2–3 minutes, then waves his geologist’s pick at them and asks where they come from. One of the entities raises its right hand to its belt, which emits a puff of smoke that knocks Rapuzzi to the ground as if from an electric shock. As he is lying there, one of them grabs his pick and he notices its green hand has 8 claws. They climb up the rock and into the disc, which soon shoots straight out and into the air, hovering briefly at an angle, then vanishes. Rapuzzi feels a blast of wind that blows him across the ground. His pick is missing. http://www.nicap.org/470814friuli_dir.htm

1947 August 14 — 10:40 a.m. Three men of the 147th Airways and Air Communications Service Squadron at Harmon Field, Guam, see two small crescent-shaped objects zigzagging at 1,200 feet. They disappear in the clouds and another object emerges and proceeds west. http://www.project1947.com/fig/guam47.htm

1947 August 14 — The FBI concludes that the plane carrying Davidson and Brown was not sabotaged, nor was it carrying actual flying disc parts.

1950 August 14 — 11:27 a.m. Flight Lt. Stan J. Hubbard and two other officers at Farnborough Airfield, Hampshire, UK, hear a humming noise. Hubbard looks up and sees a flat gray disc, about 100 feet in diameter, at an altutide of 700–1,000 feet. He watches it for 30 seconds as it flies at a speed of 800–1,000 mph and makes a series of S-turns, oscillating as it moves. The other two officers see nothing. https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-files/flying-saucer-working-party/

1952 August 14 — Australian Minister for Air William McMahon states facetiously in Parliament that flying saucer reports are “probably based on flights of imagination,” but indicates he will “cause a thorough investigation to be made.”

1952 August 14 — The CIA’s special UFO study group meets for the first time and is given a summary (probably written by A. Ray Gordon, project officer of the CIA’s Physics and Electronics Branch) of UFO history, an analysis of Project Blue Book, and a discussion of explained sightings and theories about unexplained sightings. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020013-6.pdf

1952 August 14 — 7:20 p.m. People on the docks of Phillippeville [modern Skikda], Algeria, see an enormous red disc leaving behind a greenish trail. At 9:15 p.m., two people in Constantine, Algeria, watch a luminous object flying at high speed. It emits a bright light.

1952 August 14 — 10:30 p.m. A yellow ball of light undulates up and down and from side to side over the Mathieson chemical plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It is also seen to shoot ahead abruptly and come to a halt in the same manner. Witnesses estimate that the ball passes over at 5,000 feet, growing fainter and fainter as it moves away. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1957 August 14 — 8:55 p.m. Varig Airlines pilot Capt. Jorgé Campos Araujo and First Officer Edgar O. Soares observe a domed disc pacing their C-47 cargo plane at 6,300 feet over Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil. The UFO speeds up and crosses just in front of them, hovers briefly, then dives into the undercast at 5,700 feet. When the object hovers, it affects the engines, which cough and wheeze, and dims the cabin lights. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1957-Aug-Sept-SN.pdf

1975 August 14 — 9:35 p.m. Maj. Claude Riddle is flying a helicopter at 900 feet while approaching Stockton (Calif.) Metropolitan Airport. Suddenly, air traffic controller Joe Savage sees flashing lights closing in on him in a collision course. When he advises Riddle to take evasive action, the object turns orange and shoots up to 5,000 feet, where it hovers. Riddle looks behind him and sees another light trailing him a mile or so away. When he swings around, he sees it shimmering like a diamond and as big as a jetliner. Two blue beams come out from the sides. Dan Long, another controller sees the object through field glasses at an altitude of about 2,000 feet, then it moves upward while emitting a glow of green-tinted smoke and flashing red lights. Gary Duran and two friends also see the object while walking near the airport. After 5 minutes of hovering near the airport, the object turns bright red and shoots off. https://vdocuments.mx/mufon-ufo-journal-1976-2-february-skylook

AUGUST 13th

1819 August 13 — 8:00–9:00 p.m. A brilliant white fireball streaks across the sky at Amherst, Massachusetts. The next morning, Erastus Dewey finds a strange substance 20 feet from his front door and assumes it is residue from the meteorite. It is about 8 inches in diameter, resembles an upside-down salad dish, and consists of buff-colored pulpy substance with an overwhelmingly bad smell. It is covered with a nap that, when removed, causes the interior to liquefy and form a starchy substance. A couple days later, it largely dissipates. Geologist Edward Hitchcock thinks it is some kind of “gelatinous fungus” common to the area in the late summer.

1874 August 13 —11:00 p.m. A large, “luminous electric cloud” flies over the western edge of Pascagoula, Mississippi, from the northwest to the southeast. It illuminates the ground and emits heat so intense that some witnesses think their houses are about to ignite. When last seen over the Gulf of Mexico, it renders the spars and rigging of a ship “distinctly visible.”

1914 August 13 — 7:30 p.m. High Constable Hobson and numerous residents of Sweaburg, Ontario, see “two large aeroplanes” pass from east to west. Sporadic sightings of mystery airplanes continue in the region for the next two weeks.

1917 13 — Some 18,000 people have been flocking to Fátima and nearby Aljustrel, Portugal, drawn by reports of visions and miracles. The assembled multitude hears thunder and witnesses lightning in a clear blue sky. Then the sun grows pale and a cloud hovers above the oak tree where the apparitions usually appear. Provincial administrator Artur de Oliveira Santos, believing that these events are politically disruptive, takes the children into custody, jailing them before they can reach the Cova da Iria. Santos interrogates and threatens the children to get them to divulge the contents of the secrets.

1918 August 13 — Evening. Mr. C. Rawlinson is cycling to a dance on Carrington Road, New Plymouth, New Zealand, when he sees a bright star against some mountains about 6 miles away. It starts flashing red and white and moves closer and downward, then rises to 400–500 feet and performs other maneuvers. He rides home to tell his sisters, who also see the light until about 8:30 p.m., when it moves off to the sea.

1946 August 13 — Capt. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, US naval attaché in Paris, forwards as top secret a report by the French government on ghost rocket activity in Scandinavia. It states that “a good number of these projectiles are of the V-1 type in the form of a torpedo with two small wings.” A map shows them originating in the Leningrad [now St. Petersburg] area, Russia.

1946 August 13 — The Hungarian report of August 6 causes Maj. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin, Army assistant chief of staff for intelligence, to ask Budapest for further information. Top-secret requests are sent to military attachés in London, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen asking for listings of all ghost rocket reports, as well as V-3 and V-4 missiles. The military attaché in Oslo reports that a Soviet ship in the north Baltic Sea has been transmitting code to shore stations regarding the ghost rockets. The military attaché in Moscow asks other European officials about where the rockets originate and gets several answers, which he forwards on to Chamberlin: Hiiumaa island, Estonia; Latvia; or Peenemünde, Germany. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney of the US Forces in Europe Theater replies that Peenemünde is a likely origin, since the site has been refurbished. The military attaché in Stockholm suspects Hiiumaa, Peenemünde, or Parikkala in Finland, while the naval attaché in Stockholm thinks that Łeba, Poland, is the launch site.

1946 August 13 — The New York Times says the ghost rocket situation is extremely dangerous and that Sweden will not tolerate such violations.

1946 August 13 — The US naval attaché and the Assistant US military attaché in Stockholm interview three Swedish Air Force officers assigned to the General Staff who say that they believe the objects are rockets. http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron2.htm

1946 August 13 — Afternoon. A troop of Boy Scouts in Denmark see a rocket-like object moving quickly at an altitude of 1,600 feet. They can see small side wings and fins. A blue-white light streams from the bottom, and it diverges from a straight course to a 35° curve. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1946 August 13 — 8:00 p.m. A cigar-shaped object flies past a witness at Karlskrona, Sweden, at a distance of only 150 feet. Only 5 feet long, it emits a faint green light and trails smoke from the rear. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1947 August 13 — 1:00 p.m. Albert Clarence Urie and his two sons Billy and Kenneth see a straw hat–shaped, sky-blue object about 10 wide, 10 feet high, and 20 feet long. It has “pods” on the side emitting flames and is flying along the Snake River Canyon six miles west of Blue Lakes Ranch near Twin Falls, Idaho. The UFO is moving up and down towards them at 1,000 mph and an altitude of 75 feet about 1/2 mile away. Urie is about 300 feet from the object, which is about level with him and silhouetted against the canyon wall. It disappears behind a hill about one mile away. Hynek, for Project Blue Book, later identifies it as an “atmospheric eddy.” http://www.nicap.org/470813snakeriver_dir.htm

1947 August 13 — The San Francisco Examiner’s Washington Bureau hears a rumor from a US intelligence source that Soviet agents have been ordered to solve the mystery of flying saucers. It reports that the Kremlin believes that the discs are connected with Army experiments in anti-radar weaponry.

1952 August 13 — Around 7:00 p.m. Two civilians in the Tampa, Florida, area watch three UFOs. One object changes its course abruptly to the west, moving in excess of 600 mph. The same object hovers for about 5 minutes then moves at an excessive rate back to the east and resumes its course to the north and disappears. The two other objects do not alter course but disappear to the north. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 13 — Night. Pioneer Airlines pilot Capt. Max M. Jacoby sees a mystery light while on a routine test flight out of Dallas Love Field, Texas. He tries to intercept it, but the light evades him and disappears. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 13 — 9:10 p.m. A witness in Oakland, California, calls Hamilton AFB [now closed] in Novato to notify them he is watching “two balls of fire” making a 10-mile circle and leaving in the direction of Hamilton. When the report is made to Capt. Kenneth Broden, Hamilton AFB Airdrome Officer, he orders an F-94 jet scrambled to search the bay between Oakland and the air base. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 13 — 9:45 p.m. In Tokyo, Japan, US Marine Corps pilot Maj. James D. McGough sees an orange light fly a left orbit at 8,000 feet and 230 mph, then spiral down to no more than 1,500 feet, remain stationary for 2–3 minutes, and go out. An attempted interception is unsuccessful. http://www.nicap.org/520813tokyo_dir.htm

1952 August 13 — 11:10 p.m. USAF Reserve Capt. Stanley W. Thompson sees a formation of lighted objects flying rapidly over Tucson, Arizona. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1953 August 13 — Paramount Pictures’ The War of the Worlds premieres in New York City. It is a modern retelling of H. G. Wells’s story of an invasion from Mars and features a Northrop YB-49 flying wing dropping an atomic bomb on the invading Martians. The color footage comes from a test flight. The film is produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, and stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_ ; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046534/

1956 August 13–14 — 9:30 p.m. A radar-visual UFO sighting begins at RAF Bentwaters [now Bentwaters Parks], Suffolk, UK. A blip traveling approximately 4,000–8,000 mph on an east-west course is picked up on radar. It moves in a straight line to a position about 15 miles northwest of Bentwaters. Within a few minutes, about a dozen normal targets are spotted 8 miles southwest, moving northeast at about 100 mph. In front of the targets are three objects in a triangular formation, about 1,000 feet apart. All the targets then appear to converge into one extremely large target (several times the size of a B-36), which continues moving to the northeast, then stops for a few minutes, then resumes, and is lost to radar. The entire sighting up to this point takes 25 minutes. Five minutes later, another solid target appears, flying east to west at 4,000 mph or more, then vanishes when it moves out of range. A T-33 trainer from the 512th Fighter Interceptor Squadron crewed by 1st Lts. Charles Metz and Andrew Rowe is sent to investigate the radar contacts, but sees nothing. No visual sightings of the objects are made from Bentwaters in this period, with the exception of a single amber star-like object which was subsequently identified as probably being Mars. At 10:55 p.m., another target is picked up 30 miles to the east, traveling west at 2,000–4,000 mph. It passes directly overhead and is seen as a white light by both air (a C-47 at 4,000 feet reports it passed underneath him) and ground observers. Bentwaters notifies RAF Lakenheath, also in Suffolk, about what is going on, and Lakenheath personnel see a luminous object stop, then zoom off to the east. Also, two white lights are seen joining from different directions, which are tracked on two screens at Lakenheath. According to T/Sgt. Forrest Perkins, watch supervisor at the Lakenheath radar center, at midnight Lakenheath notifies RAF Neatishead, Norfolk, that a strange object is buzzing the base. A de Havilland Venom night fighter is scrambled, directed by Neatishead radar controller Flight Lt. Freddie H. C. Wimbledon. Perkins and Wimbledon claim the jets are sent up around midnight, but the crews think it is at 2:00 a.m. The Venom, crewed by Flight Officers David Chambers and John Brady from 23 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach [now closed] in Cambridgeshire, finds the object on radar north of Cambridge and sees it as a bright white light, which then disappears. The navigator says it is the “clearest target I have ever seen on radar.” The object, however, is behind the plane and stays there for some time, despite climbs, dives, and circling. Ground radar operators say that the object is glued right behind the fighter. After 10 minutes, the fighter heads back. The UFO follows briefly, then stops and hovers. Another Venom, crewed by Flight Officers Ian Fraser-Ker and Ivan Logan, is scrambled at 2:40 a.m. but experiences engine problems and aborts. Ministry of Defence officer Ralph Noyes says that one of the Venom pilots has taken a gun-camera film, which was later shown at a briefing in Whitehall. The object is tracked on two radars, leaving the area at 600 mph. The encounter is classified until 1969, when it is analyzed by the Colorado project. Gordon Thayer suggests that the “apparently rational, intelligent behavior of the UFO suggests a mechanical device of unknown origin as the most probable explanation of this sighting.” A later investigation is conducted by David Clarke, Andy Roberts, and Jenny Randles. In contrast to the reports given in the original classified teleprinter message (from 3910th Air Base Group to ADC at Ent AFB, now the US Olympic Training Center) three days after the event and in the accounts of both Wimbledon and Perkins, the air crews now state that the radar contacts were unimpressive and that no “tail-chase” or action on the part of the target occurred. They also assert no visual contacts were made. Chambers and Brady comment that “my feeling is that there was nothing there, it was some sort of mistake,” while Ivan Logan, the second Venom’s navigator, states that “all we saw was a blip which rather indicated a stationary target.” At the time 23 Squadron decides that the radar contact had, if anything, been with a weather balloon. Martin Shough concudes that there are actually several incidents at different times and places and that the relationship between each is unclear. http://www.nicap.org/560813bentwaters_dir.htm; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakenheath-Bentwaters_incident ; http://www.cufos.org/cases/1956_08_13-14_GB_SFK_Bentwaters-Lakenheath-RAFs_CUFOS_MultiWit_RVar.pdf ;
http://www.martinshough.com/aerialphenomena/Lakenheath/background.htm ; http://martinshough.com/aerialphenomena/Lakenheath/logan3.htm

1959 August 13 — 4:00 p.m. Pilot Jack H. Goldsberry, flying a Cessna 170 from Hobbs to Albuquerque, New Mexico, at 8,000 feet, notices halfway between Roswell and Corona, that his Magnesyn electric compass has suddenly moved around a slow 360° rotation in about 4–5 seconds. His other standard magnetic compass is spinning wildly. About this time, he sees three small, gray, and slightly fuzzy elliptical objects in close echelon formation passing in front from left to right and around his plane at a distance about 450–600 feet at a speed of about 200 mph. The Magnesyn compass follows the objects’ position as they circle the plane, and after one full circle they disappear to the rear. Then both compasses settle back to normal. The controller at Albuquerque cancels his flight plan and orders him to land at Kirtland AFB, where he is interrogated by a USAF major, who tells him that he might become ill from the experience. http://www.nicap.org/590813roswell_dir.htm

1959 August 13 — Around 9:45 p.m. Orville Shanks is driving with three passengers on Highway 332 north of Freeport, Texas, when they see a bright object with two satellite lights approach at low altitude. The car motor stalls and the headlights go out. The two lights appear to land, the main object follows them, continually changing colors and varying the intensity of its light. The motor and lights come back on when the UFOs cross the road, and Shanks drives on. About midnight they return, and the object is still there. Shanks gets out and approaches, but the UFO starts glowing brightly and making a noise, and they drive off again. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1959-July-Sept.pdf

1960 August 13–14 — 11:50 p.m.–2:05 a.m. Highway Patrol officers Charles A. Carson and Stanley E. Scott, plus three others at Red Bluff, California, are on patrol when see what they think at first is an airliner about to crash. It turns out to be a maneuvering, silent red light with five white lights, descending to 100–200 feet altitude. It suddenly reverses course, climbs to 500 feet, hovers, sweeps the ground with a red beam, performs aerial gymnastics, then heads east, chased by the police car. It is joined by a similar object from the south, then it disappears in the east. A local radar operator confirms the UFO at the time but denies it the next day. Tehoma County sheriff’s officers also see the UFO and another similar one the same night. http://www.nicap.org/600813dir.htm

1965 August 13 — 9:30 p.m.? A 37 year-old man has just put his car in his garage at Baden, Pennsylvania, when he sees a disc-shaped object about 300 feet in diameter flying in front of the moon toward the north at about 50 mph and 2,300 feet away. It is surrounded with orange lights that weaken as a blue light comes on, which is intense for about 3 seconds. Then all the lights disappear and a sort of “shock wave” that shakes the tree leaves commences. The witness goes into his house and calls the Air Force. About 20 minutes later his vision becomes hazy, his eyes grow painful, and he gradually loses vision in both eyes. He notices his entire body is sunburned. A medical examination indicates exposure to ultraviolet radiatio. His vision returns gradually over several days. The Air Force suspects a hoax. http://www.nicap.org/650813baden_dir.htm

1967 August 13 — 8:00 p.m. Between Pilar de Goiás and Crixás, Goiás, Brazil, a plantation worker at the Estancia de Santa Maria, Ignácio da Souza, is returning home from work when he and his wife see an object in the form of an upside-down basin 115 feet in diameter sitting on the landing strip of the ranch. They initially think it is some flying machine tested by the ranch owner, Ibiracy de Moraes, a wealthy man and former president of the Bank of Brazil. Between the object and the couple, there are three humanoid, child-size beings that they initially think are naked children before realizing that they are hairless creatures wearing a tight suit of yellow. The beings seem to be playing around silently, but then move quickly towards them. Da Souza tells his wife to lock herself up in their house. He is armed with a rifle and frightened, so da Souza shoots the closest of the beings. At the same time, the UFO emits a ray of green light that hits him, throwing him to the ground unconscious. Seeing her husband fall from the kitchen window, his wife runs onto the scene shouting, interposes herself between the beings and the body of her husband, and picks up his rifle. But during this time the beings have retrieved the one that had fallen to ground and quickly flee to enter the craft. After a short time, it slowly rises vertically while emitting a buzz similar to that of a swarm of bees. Taken to the hospital of Goiânia, the state capital, de Souza suffers from nausea and a general numbness. Burns are noted, initially attributed to a toxic plant, but when de Souza and de Moraes hear the erroneous diagnosis and are told what had happened, doctors perform a blood analysis that returns with a diagnosis of advanced leukemia with life expectancy of two months. Da Souza quickly deteriorates, suffers, develops yellowish spots, and dies on October 11. In accordance with his instructions, his wife burns the bed, the mattress, and the clothing that he has used. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1967-13-08-brazil-crixas.htm

1970 August 13 — 10:50 p.m. Police officer Evald Hansen Maarup is driving 5 miles south of Haderslev, Denmark, when he is surrounded by a bluish-white light. His engine stops and the car lights and radio go out. Heat inside the car increases. He sees a conical light coming from the bottom of a large, silent, gray object. After a few seconds, the light is drawn into the UFO, a process that takes about 5 minutes. It speeds away vertically. http://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAJournalVolume8No.4Sep1979.pdf ,; http://www.ufo-sandheden.dk/ufo/dk14.htm ; https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2012/09/the-maarup-encounters.html

1975 August 13 — 1:15 a.m. Sgt. Charles L. Moody, stationed at Holloman AFB, is out in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, awaiting a meteor shower. He sees a metallic disc drop from the sky some 300 feet in front of him. It is about 50 feet long, 20 feet wide, and faintly luminous. It stops descending at 20 feet altitude and begins approaching Moody. Uneasy, he gets in his car and turns the ignition on, but the engine is dead. Moody can see an oblong window in the UFO and shadow figures moving within. He hears a high-pitched sound like a dental drill for a short time, then he feels numb. The next thing he knows, the UFO is ascending and disappears from sight within seconds. The car starts and he drives home, where he notices the time is 3:00 a.m., representing about 90 minutes he can’t account for. Moody gets a pain in his lower back in the afternoon. Soon he is put in touch with APRO’s Jim Lorenzen, who calls him on August 21. Moody now has a heat rash on his lower body. His memories about the incident eventually return, and the Lorenzens visit him in 1976 at an overseas post where he narrates an abduction scenario with shortish, human-like aliens with big heads and wearing coveralls.

1976 August 13 — 8:30 a.m. The pilot of a Piper Arrow PA-28 is flying at 3,500 feet between Diepholz and Petershagen, Germany, when he notices a strange light approaching from the northeast. After 3–5 minutes, the object comes closer and takes a fixed position off the left wing. The object is oval-shaped and very bright yellow in its center with an indistinct flame-orange boundary. Suddenly the Piper goes into two rapid 360° clockwise rolls from which the pilot must recover manually. He discovers that he has dropped about 500 feet during the roll-and-recovery maneuver. When he next checks his instrument panel, he discovers that his magnetic compass is spinning in a clockwise direction so fast that he can’t read the number in its square window. Looking outside again, he sees that the UFO is still behind him, suggesting that he has lost the same amount of altitude. The pilot climbs back to his cruise altitude and calls on the radio to flight control at Hannover airport. The air traffic controller tells him that the radar shows both his airplane and another object nearby. The controller says that an aircraft will be sent to investigate. Little more than 4 minutes later, two USAF F-4 Phantom jets arrive on either side of him travelling 400–500 mph. The jet on the right side is slightly lower, closer, and ahead of the jet on the left. The pilot is certain they are American planes. Just as the jets arrive, the UFO accelerates forward and then upward at about a 30° angle above the horizontal and turns right, passing in front of his aircraft. It quickly outdistances its pursuers and is out of sight in a matter of seconds. The compass eventually returns to normal operation after the UFO departs. The pilot is interrogated after his landing by “military men.”

2002 August 13 — 2:15 a.m. A woman watching the Perseid meteor show in Cow Bay, Nova Scotia, sees a large meteor with a long tail appear out of Ursa Major and arch over her head to the southeast. Suddenly it disappears as if it has passed behind something. She also sees a straight, black line advancing trough the sky, then a “perfect black triangle of gargantuan proportions” crossing directly over the clearing around her house. It is pitch black and enormous, moving only about 10 mph and taking 5 minutes to disappear over the trees to the northwest. Ufologist Don Ledger investigates and finds that radar at Moncton Center in New Brunswick had picked up an unidentified target at that time and place.

2010 August 13 — 8:00 p.m A circle of six yellow lights appears in the sky above the Jardim Bela Vista district of Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil. Dentist Daniela Tamarossi and others spend more than 2 hours watching it maneuver.

AUGUST 12th

1883 August 12–13 — Astronomer José Árbol y Bonilla, director of the observatory on El Cerro de la Bufa in Zacatecas, Mexico, is observing the sun by eyepiece projection when he and an assistant see a large number of small bodies crossing the solar disc. Over the course of two days they count a total of 447 objects. They seem bright as they approach the sun but are dark as they pass across its face. He takes several photographs and suspects that they are relatively near the earth. Probably birds, most likely migrating sandhill cranes.

1918 August 12 — After 5:00 p.m. Two women at Durie Hill, Whanganui, New Zealand, see an airplane moving swiftly off the South Spit heading toward the south. It disappears behind Landguard Bluff. Other witnesses come forward to corroborate the sighting.

1942 August 12 — Day. Sgt. Stephen J. Brickner of the 1st Marine Division on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands is cleaning his rifle when an air-raid warning is sounded. He dives into his foxhole looking to the sky. He hears a roaring sound unlike that of an aircraft. Soon he sees a formation of more than 150 silvery objects, in straight lines of 10 or 12. The objects seem to wobble slightly. They are flying faster than Japanese planes and are soon out of sight.

1946 August 12 — 10:00 a.m. A twin-engined Saab 18 Swedish Air Force bomber crashes and explodes near Valdshult, Jönköping, Sweden, killing three airmen. Rumors circulate that it collided with a ghost rocket, but an investigation indicates that the pilot lost control.

1946 August 12 — 8:15 p.m. A torpedo-shaped ghost rocket moves slowly over a seaport town in southern Sweden, barely grazing the roofs and trailing smoke. It continues out to sea and seems to come down on a small island. Two men go out to investigate, but the island is too overgrown to allow a search. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1950 August 12 — 1:30 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Bud Oliver are at the state forestry lookout tower on Round Top Mountain north of Medford, Oregon, when they see two UFOs, one disc-shaped, the other oblong. They are about 100 feet apart, and the oblong one is tumbling in the air end over end.

1952 August 12 — 1:43 a.m. An Air Force F-94B jet fighter from Dover AFB in Delaware is flying at 20,000 feet when both the pilot and his radar crewman sight a glowing object 45° to their left and at a lower altitude, with the waters of the Delaware Bay as a dark backdrop. Curious, the jet pilot adjusts his course and heads directly at the object, which is stationary. In an apparent reaction, the object loses some of its brilliance and diminishes in size, apparently moving away. The pilot determines that the object had halted above Cape May where it again hovers. Without success, the pilot tries to raise the local CCI station on the radio on F channel to request a radar scan of the Cape May, New Jersey, area. Low on fuel, the pilot cannot pursue the UFO any further, so he breaks off the chase and heads for home. The UFO follows the jet, increasing in apparent size as it draws near and overtakes it. Eventually, the UFO loses interest and flies away to the south. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1954 August 12 — 2:29 a.m. Four military men on US Army helicopters at Maxwell AFB in Alabama see a glowing red disc soar around the base tower. There are both ground and air witnesses, as well as radar-visual confirmation.

1954 August 12 — An updated version of AFR 200-2 is issued by the Department of the Air Force and declassified by Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining. The public can now know that the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron was brought in to assist ATIC (Blue Book) with preliminary and field UFO investigations, and that USAF considers UFOs to be “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” It lists the objectives of UFO reporting as: “First as a possible threat to the security of the United States and its forces, and secondly, to determine technical aspects involved.” https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Air_Force_Regulation_200-2,_Unidentified_Flying_Objects_Reporting

1959 August 12 — A 60-year-old farmer sees an egg-shaped UFO descend at high speed and land in a pasture near Brión, Spain. Then it takes off vertically and flies east, making a noise like an engine.

1965 August 12 — 11:15 a.m. Maj. Jack D. Bond is sitting in a passenger seat of a T-29 aircraft on a heading of 300° and descending from 4,000 feet to 3,000 feet near Springfield, Ohio. He sees a UFO ascending and descending that is slightly higher than the T-29. It appears to be 5–7 miles away and moving in a general direction of 90°. The object’s speed is highly erratic during the 3 ascents and descents that the object makes. On its third descent the object appears to level off and accelerate at a speed of 690 mph or more. Project Blue Book evaluates this sighting as a solar mirage, even though the position and time of day rule that out. http://www.nicap.org/650812springfield_dir.htm

1974 August 12 — 11:30 a.m. A 15-year-old boy sees a disc maneuvering near a hedgerow at La Brousse, Charente-Maritime, France. It is about the size of a medium car, dull-lead in color, with a green reflective dome. One of three windows open “exactly like the shutter of a vanishing headlight on a sports car.” The lower part of the object rotates, but the dome does not. Later, three sharply defined circles of burnt straw form an isosceles triangle within an oval area of crushed straw. Within each imprint are two small pieces of lead.

1983 August 12 — Around 1:00 a.m. Alfred Burtoo is fishing along the Basingstoke Canal in Aldershot, Hampshire, UK, when a disc-shaped UFO lands nearby. Two humanoid beings approach him. They are 4 feet 6 inches tall, dressed in green overalls, and wear helmets with visors. They gesture at Bertoo to follow them, and he goes up a stairway into the craft. He is made to stand under an amber light. The beings speak to him in broken English, telling him that he is too old and infirm for their purposes. They then let him go. https://hive.blog/dtube/@solominer/liafboho ; https://www.ufoinsight.com/bizarre-ordeal-alfred-burtoo-abduction-wasnt/

1983 August 12 — 11:10 p.m. In the Maraponga neighborhood of Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, João de Lira Pessoa Neto is riding his motorcycle with his friend Plínio Couto de Alencar Júnior to a party. The cycle breaks down, so they push it home and head back on foot to the party. They pass the train tracks and the Cavan poles factory, where they notice that a transformer that always buzzes is silent. Stray dogs do not bark, and the lights on the poles are blinking intermittently. A strong light blinks near them and they see a disc-shaped object about 325 feet above the Lagoa da Maraponga, its shape reflected in the dark water. The object moves, and the two witnesses run off. Party hosts Roberto de Lira Pessoa Neto and his wife Rejane, Rejane’s sister, and a sailor named Cal are intrigued and decide to return to the site together. They look around and see the UFO landing on the lake shore. The disc has large round windows and a brightly lit interior. Inside they see human-looking beings moving about and looking out the windows. Roberto sees three humanoid figures beside the UFO. They seem to be covered in a plastic cloak and have a wobbling gait. Plínio thinks the object disappears and reappears like a mirage. The witnesses begin running away when another similar UFO appears above them and causes a gale. It disappears, and everything returns to normal, with dogs barking and the transfomer buzzing. Later at home, João has a strong urge to return to the scene. The object is still there, and he has a compulsion to meet the occupants. He suddenly gets dizzy and nauseous and falls to the ground unconscious. He revives 2 hours later and finds himself in a soccer field and cannot remember how he got there. He goes home, but his behavior changes, becoming ruder. On May 21, 1989, João drowns under mysterious circumstances in a lagoon in Uruoca, Ceará, Brazil.

1993 August 12 — 12:30 a.m. Two friends are watching the Perseid meteor shower in a dark school yard in North Lethbridge, Alberta, when they see a dark, gray-black, triangular object pass quickly and silently overhead for 4–5 seconds. Each point of the triangle has a red light on it. As it disappears to the south, it flips upward at a 45° angle. Another witness in a different location watches a similar object around the same time. Local radar does not show any unusual traffic.

2018 August 12 — 11:30 p.m. Frédéric K, and a companion are watching the night sky in Viry, Haute-Savoie, France, when thet see a black triangle with lights at each of its points. The object is nearly motionless, but it is rotating slightly and is completely silent. K. is struck by its immense size, which he estimates is several times the size of an airliner. After a few seconds it moves slowly northeast toward Geneva, Switzerland.

AUGUST 11th

1914 August 11–September 9 — Many British residents in South Africa observe a mystery monoplane that is assumed to be on a German reconnaissance mission. Most of the sightings are at night and at a distance. The government issues a statement on August 29 that there are no Union airplanes in South Africa, so any mystery aircraft are assumed to be enemies and should be fired upon.

1940 August 11 — The RAF Bomber Command issues a report on “Phenomena Connected with Enemy Night Tactics” concerning unidentifiable aircraft observed by bombing crews over the coast of Holland and the Ruhr Valley of Germany. The report suggests the sightings are either due to observer strain or German “experimental apparatus.”

1944 August 11 — Shortly after midnight. Capt. Alvah M. Reida is piloting a B-29 bomber based at Kharagpur, India, on a bombing mission over Palembang, Sumatra, Indonesia, when his right gunner and copilot notice a sphere “probably five or six feet in diameter, of a very bright and intense red or orange in color” that constantly throbs, at about 12,500 feet, pacing them about 1,500 feet off the starboard wing. It keeps up with the B-29, then flying at 210 mph. Reida tries to shake it off his plane, but it stays in the same relative position until, after 8 minutes, it makes an abrupt 90-degree turn and accelerates rapidly, disappearing in the overcast.

1944 11 — Night. RAF Warrant Officer Ronald R. Claridge is over France aboard a No. 7 Squadron Lancaster bomber returning from a bombing run on La Pallice, La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, France, when his radar screen goes blank. Another crewman shouts to look at a vast disc-shaped object with a long row of lights on their starboard side. They watch it for 3 minutes, then it shoots away in a flash of light. Later he draws a watercolor painting to show how the UFO dwarfed the bomber.

1946 August 11 — 8:47 p.m. Astronomer Bertil Lindblad sees an exploding fireball in Ljugarn on Gotland, Sweden.

1946 August 11 — 9:00–10:00 p.m. Hundreds of people in central and southern Sweden see “ghost bombs” that fly from south to north, giving off a brilliant blue-white light. Sometimes two of the objects are seen flying together. Some witnesses see smaller silver balls come out of the larger objects, which are variously described as cylinders and torpedos with a “wide nose” and “fire-spurting tail.” Stockholm is said to be “near the boiling point” with ghost rocket speculation.

1951 August 11 — Former USAF pilot Robert O. Dodge watches three disc-like UFOs in formation over Portland, Oregon.

1952 August 11 — A CIA memo refers to a meeting of the newly created study group on UFOs attended by eight operatives.

1954 August 11 — Frank Edwards is fired by his sponsor at the Mutual Broadcasting Network, the American Federation of Labor. He had offered to resign on August 7, citing a conflict over the type of material he has been required to report on, including AFL interests and George Meany’s personal outlook. His UFO reportage may or may not be an issue.

1954August 11 — 8:54 p.m. A1C Chase E. Lewis, tower operator at Lawson AFB [now Lawson Army Airfield] in Fort Benning, Columbus, Georgia, sees a strange stationary object in the west. It varies in brightness, changing color from white to red to orange to white again, with seemingly high-speed motions. An Army helicopter piloted by WO R. T. Wade is sent to investigate; he locates the object 20 miles west of Lawson at 2,000 feet. Wade abandons the chase due to low fuel after 2 minutes. At 9:05 p.m., two additional tower operators (including A1C William N. Watson) view the object. A second Army helicopter, piloted by U. S. Tarma, is diverted to the object at 9:27 p.m. He sees it, but it disappears at 9:29 p.m. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-June-Aug.pdf

1974 August 11 — 3:23 a.m. Police officers Mark E. Paine and Michael Alden watch three luminous UFOs in a triangle formation between Tilton and Concord, New Hampshire. A fourth object, a domed ellipse, rises from the trees and approaches their car. As the officers signal the object, it signals back, then veers away.

1977 August 11 — 8:05 p.m. A 37-year-old police detective in South Brunswick, New Jersey, watches a silent disc-shaped object come over the horizon. Four other witnesses also see it. There is something that looks like a rotating “radar mast” on the object. It rises into the clouds and shoots off toward the north-northeast after 3.5 minutes.

1979 August 11 — 11:00 p.m. Two 18-year-olds, a male college student and a female telephone company employee, are sitting in a car near Bergen Park, Colorado, looking at the homes at the base of a small mountain on Soda Creek Road off Interstate 70. They see a white light about two-thirds of the way up the mountain. It grows bigger, four times the brightness of the houselights at the base of the mountain. It seems to become a cluster of four lights with a dark space in the middle. After 3 minutes, the light silently rises over the mountain, hovers for 3 seconds, and drops down behind it. A glow remains over the mountain.

1987 August 11 — A witness in Osbornville, New Jersey, sees a shiny, oval object that hovers, becomes brighter, and takes off like a shot, leaving a white trail. It then stops abruptly, maneuvers, flashes more lights, and shoots straight up out of sight.

2003 August 11 — 6:00 p.m. Diana Luca and her mother are chatting at the kitchen table in her home in New Westminster, British Columbia. Out of the corner of her eye, Luca spots a black object behind the trees in the back alley. The two step out on the patio for a better look and see a UFO flying behind the trees and over the top of the shorter ones. The object, flat and shaped like a Frisbee, flips on its underside, which is as red and shiny as a Coke can. She calls her husband, Mark Murphy, who is inside. By the time he gets to the porch, the UFO looks cigar-shaped and is an estimated 1.8 miles away. Murphy rushes inside to get a camcorder and gets the rest of the sighting on tape.

2016 August 11 — In Roswell in the 21st Century, Kevin D. Randle upends his previous position and argues that while the Roswell incident remains shrouded in mystery, it was almost certainly not generated by the recovery of a downed spacecraft and dead occupants.

AUGUST 10th

1914 August 10–11 — Night. Maj. Becke, commander of defenses at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, UK, reports that two or three cigar-shaped airships are seen above the Vickers shipyard. Soldiers fire upon them with machine guns and the only anti-aircraft battery on the west coast.

1945 August 10 — 3:00 a.m. Pianist Doris La Fountain is driving home along Market Street after finishing a concert at a night club in East Paterson [now Elmwood Park], New Jersey. She is accompanied by music store proprietor Thomas Brino and James Shaw of Clifton, New Jersey. For about 5 minutes they watch a brilliant red and green rectangular object manoeuvre at ground level about 70 feet away. It shoots off into the sky and disappears.

1949 August 10 — USAF’s AMC issues a final 600-page report, “Unidentified Flying Objects—Project Grudge,” Technical Report 102-AC-49/15-100, or “The Grudge Report,” authored by Lt. Howard W. Smith and George W. Towles. Hynek’s April analysis is included as an appendix. Based on 237 cases, Hynek finds that 32% can be explained astronomically. Others say 12% are balloons, 33% are other misidentifications, hoaxes, or insufficient information. That leaves 23% (55) classed as unknowns. Despite this, witnesses are mostly deluded, hysterical, lying, or crazy, and “further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein.” The report concludes there is little evidence to prove UFOs are real and do not represent a security threat. It recommends that press releases be created to “aid in dispelling public apprehension.” On the other hand, it suggests that military and government agencies interested in “psychological warfare” be informed of the findings. Appendix D is written by USAF Scientific Advisory Board member George E. Valley, who writes that extraterrestrial civilizations “might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should, therefore, expect at this time above all to behold such visitations.” Project Grudge enters a period of dormancy until July 1950. The report is classified Secret until August 1, 1952. http://www.nicap.org/grudge/grudge_dir.htm

1952 August 10 — 5:38 p.m. Roy E. Munson is resting in his hammock at 1231 Widergren Drive, Rockford, Illinois, when he sees a disc-shaped object moving west to east and streaking across the sky in 6 seconds. Within minutes, another appears on the same flight path. Some family members and neighbours join him to watch the objects, which keep appearing for the next 90 minutes by which time a total of 54 have gone by. Munson alerts the CAA operator at the Rockford airport, who calls O’Hare Airport in Chicago, which sends two USAF jet interceptors to the area. They appear just as the last of the discs, which seem surrounded by a haze, disappears. Of the 54 objects, 36 appear larger that the others and move faster. Fifty follow the straight west-to-east path out of sight. Three deviate from the path to the north, and one deviates to the south. http://nicap.org/rockford520811dir.htm

1952 August 10 — A resident of Cuenca in central Spain, while walking along the road to Madrid, sees a round disc cross the sky in a matter of seconds. It gives off two luminous trails.

1953 August 10 — Wilbert B. Smith issues another report on Project Magnet, in which he concludes there is a “substantial probability of the real existence of extraterrestrial vehicles” that use a “technology considerably in advance of what we have.” The report is eventually sent to Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent.

1954 August 10 — The Canadian Department of Transport officially folds Project Magnet but permits Wilbert Smith to continue using its facility on his own time at no expense to the government. Smith continues his work private until his death in December 1962.

1978 August 10 — CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Gene F. Wilson asks Todd Zechel of CAUS to suspend his FOIA request until he has a chance to look at the 1,000 pages of documents that are currently under review for release. Most of these files are from the Office of Scientific Intelligence in the 1950s, leading CAUS to suspect that they will mostly consist of Air Force and Navy UFO reports, plus some records of unauthorized CIA investigations.

1979 August 10 — Two large metallic spheres are found in Bolivia, one near Enconada and another near Buen Retiro, just hours after reports of a fireball in Bolivia and northern Chile. Newspaper reports at the time focus on the re-entry of a satellite or rocket stage as the possible cause, suggested by Col. Ariel Coca, director of the Bolivian Air Force Academy. The Defense Attaché of the US Embassy in La Paz promptly informs the US Defense Intelligence Agency via telexed Moon Dust reports, which include translations of two Bolivian newspaper reports. Moon Dust is the unclassified name of a cold war USAF program to obtain Soviet space hardware that survives re-entry. In 2014, amateur satellite tracker Ted Molczan presents strong circumstantial evidence that the spheres are debris from the re-entry of the Delta rocket second stage 1979-072B that launched Westar 3 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the same day.

1981 August 10 — 3:30 a.m. Russell Matson is driving west on 150th Street in Apple Valley, Minnesota, when just west of Pilot Knob Road he sees a hexagonal object nearly overhead, at perhaps a distance of 500 feet. It has two green, two red, and white lights on its corners. It is 60–90 feet across. The object pivots, making a 90° turn while stationary, then descends and approaches the witness. It makes a soft whooshing sound as it passes, like gas escaping from a propane tank.

1998 August 10 — 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m. At least 4 witnesses at Quirindi, New South Wales, see “20 silver balls” performing complex maneuvers. Angel hair streams from the objects during acceleration and right-angle turns. The substance consolidates into long, white strands that slowly fall to earth, draping on telephone lines and trees. It is white, cotton-like, and strong, requiring a good tug to break, but quickly sublimates to nothing on handling. A sample is sent to UFO researcher Bill Chalker for analysis. Microscopic imaging by indicates it is spider web. Another witness in Piallaway, New South Wales, reports similar material at 2:00 p.m.

AUGUST 9th

1909 August 9 — 7:30–8:00 p.m. A flying object with lights on its front and back sails at a great altitude from west to east over Concord, New Hampshire, eventually disappearing into a cloud. Capt. Lyman Jackman at first thinks it is a balloon, but its estimated speed of 45–50 mph against the wind leads him to think otherwise. At about the same time, Bertha Niles of Vale Perkins, Quebec, watches a similar lighted object moving west to east.

1909 August 9 — Night. Residents of Moss Vale, New South Wales, watch a large lighted object like an airship float over the town.

1934 August 9 — Around 5:00 a.m. Musician Leon M. Thompson is boating on Keuka Lake in western New York when he notices an odd cloud on the west side of the lake. It is in the form of an elongated cone some 60–75 feet in length and 10–15 feet in diameter at its largest point. Suddenly the sky lights up in a flash and the cloud emits a fireball that arcs across the lake to the east and leaves a fiery train. It falls on a cottage and throws up a cloud of mist or steam that slowly dissipates.

1952 August 9 — 1:45 a.m. A/3C Joseph F. Raley is walking to work at Lake Charles Air Force Station [now closed] in Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he observes a disc-like object from a distance away of 3,000–5,000 feet. The object is at an estimated altitude of 5,000 feet. It moves several hundred mph faster than any known jet aircraft. No sound is heard. The object is first seen moving north to south until it crosses the air station, where it stops and hovers for approximately 2 seconds, then takes off to the west. http://www.nicap.org/520809lakecharles_dir.htm

1953 August 9 — 9:34 p.m. Supervisor Larry E. Towner and other Ground Observer Corps personnel report a glowing disc about 200 feet in diameter over Moscow, Idaho. At 10:10 p.m., the first of two F-86s is scrambled. The object lingers, with other lights seen, until around 5:00 a.m. http://www.nicap.org/530809moscow_dir.htm; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1953-Aug-Dec.pdf

1959 August 9 — 7:30 p.m. Petroleum engineer Armando Uribe is returning home from Cerro Sombrero, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, with his wife and an 11-year-old housemaid when their pickup runs out of fuel. As they are waiting for another vehicle, the girl spots a bright blue light around 7:54 p.m. that is swinging in the air with a pendulum-like motion. As it approaches, they see it is an object like a metallic egg standing on end with two shafts of white light projecting from the bottom. A rose-colored, rotating device is on top. The object makes a quick movement when Uribe gets out of the truck, but then moves closer. Uribe points a rifle at it, and it quickly recedes and disappears. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1959-July-Sept.pdf

1964 August 9 — 9:00 p.m. Baltazar Flores, Franciso Perez, Ruben Lozaya, and Elpidio Salas are camping near the Cerro Viejo, Sonora, Mexico, where they plan to explore for minerals. Suddenly a “dark, cloud-like object” approaches at high speed. As it passes by, the trees shake and they hear an explosion. They return the next day and less than 2 miles from their campsite they find a compact, gelatinous mass of green-turquoise color about 8 inches long. When they poke it with a stick, the stick becomes covered with a sticky substance like chewing gun. They report the incident to the authorities, but no one is interested. One of the witnesses returns 3 days later and finds most of the mass gone, with some residue on the rocks and grass.

1966 August 9 — Robert J. Low, assistant dean in the University of Colorado Graduate School, is also interested in the UFO project. He consults with several scientists and reports on what they tell him in a memo to E. James Archer, dean of the graduate school, and Thurston E. Manning, university vice president. The memo, which is not sent to Condon and is intended to show university officials that the project will not embarrass them, says: “Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by nonbelievers who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.” He recommends stressing the psychology and sociology of the witnesses rather than physical evidence. The memo stays under wraps for a year and a half.

1997 August 9 — 5:07 p.m. Swissair Flight 127 to Zürich, Switzerland, is flying northeast over Queens, New York, near John F. Kennedy International Airport, when pilots Capt. Philippe Bobet and First Officer Kurt Grunder see a cylindrical, glowing-white object, about the size of a fuselage of a small light aircraft, heading toward the Boeing 747 at high speed. The airliner is in level flight at 20,000 feet and cruising at 390 mph in a cloudless sky, and the UFO is 100–200 feet above it. There is no noise from the object, and no trail or wake disturbance is detected. The near collision lasts about only one second. The object is not detected on radar, and it does not trigger the aircraft’s collision warning system. The object is explained as a weather balloon, which is spotted by a United Airlines pilot in nearly the same location and height 72 minutes after the incident. http://www.nicap.org/970809swissair_dir.htm

AUGUST 7th

1869 August 7 — 12:00 noon. Four or five witnesses watch a luminous object land in a vacant lot about 200 yards north of the village of Adamstown, Pennsylvania. It is originally square-shaped but shoots up into a column about 3–4 feet high and 2 feet thick. The object glitters like a “column of burnished silver.” It gradually fades away and disappears after 10 minutes. No unusual traces are found on the lot.

1909 August 7 — 10:30 p.m. Four young men at brick kilns near the railway station in Goulburn, New South Wales, see a bright, pale blue light arise from behind some hills to the east. After ascending, it circles back in the direction it came from. The object is said to be visible every night from August 5–10.

1945 August 7 — During a press conference with the Seattle Times, Col. Franklin Matthias, officer in charge at the Hanford Engineer Works, admits the plant has had problems with aerial intrusions, but that radar has been installed and an arrangement made with the Navy to intercept any unidentified aircraft. http://www.project1947.com/fig/hendershot.htm

1946 August 7 — Swedish Lt. Lennart Neckman of the Defense Staff’s Air Defense Division sees a clear, yellow flame passing low and slow over the countryside. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1947 August 7 — Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer, assistant chief of staff for army intelligence at the Fourth Air Force, who has just returned to Hamilton Field from Tacoma, says “there is not sufficient evidence or testimony available to this headquarters to conclude whether or not the reports of so-called flying disks in the Tacoma area or any other area have any basis of fact.” He adds that the Maury Island crash “did not occur.”

1947 August 7 — The Seattle FBI office interrogates Crisman and Dahl and announces the Maury Island incident is a hoax. The FBI file notes that Dahl stated that “if questioned by the authorities he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble over the matter.” Dahl’s daughter Louise admits in 2007 that the whole story was made up, as did her brother Charles in the late 1960s, who called Crisman a “smooth-talking con artist.” The affair had started as a joke and blossomed into something worse. Associated Press reporter Elmer Vogel says that Dahl’s wife had compelled him to tell Vogel the truth. Morello also speaks to Crisman, who admits the story is baseless. https://www.ufodigest.com/article/maury-island-no-longer-a-mystery-a-ufo-hoax-exposed/ ; http://www.jasoncolavito.com/inquiry-into-shaver-and-palmer.html

1952 August 7 — 12:02 a.m. At Kerkrade, Netherlands, marine engineer Will Jansen watches a domed object swoop down to a low altitude, hover, zigzag, then speed away. He sees a similar object hovering further away. It finally tilts up vertically and shoots out of sight.

1952 August 7 — 9:08 a.m. Mrs. Susan Pzuhl (or Pfuhl) observes over San Antonio, Texas, four round UFOs that give off a color similar to white-hot metal. The objects appear to be approximately 18 inches in diameter and are observed one at a time at intervals of approximately 20 minutes. With the exception of one object that moves slowly, the speed must have been 3 times as fast as a propeller-driven aircraft. No sound can be heard. Their maneuvers consist of radical directional change by the first object, straight and level flight by the second object, a slight directional change by the third object, and a large circular manoeuvre by the fourth object. An aircraft passes under the fourth object with no apparent reaction by the plane or the object. It vanishes suddenly like an extinguished light. Duration is 70 minutes. http://www.nicap.org/520807sanantonio_dir.htm

1952 August 7 — 3:00 p.m. Two Ground Observer Corps skywatchers in Silverton, Oregon, Ida Pfeifer and Dorothy Sthamann, see an aluminum-colored object 3 miles away that appears at first triangular, then more saucer shaped. Army and air observers in Portland confirm that jet interceptors are at that moment in pursuit of the object. Replacement skywatchers Sadie Barkhurst and Mrs. Olaf Teglund also see the object at 5:00 p.m. All agree that the UFO is headed east at a moderate speed, but darts “fiercely” toward the interceptor when it approaches.

1954 August 7–8 — One of the first UFO meetings in California ia held on the slopes of Palomar Mountain, with lectures by George Adamski, Daniel Fry, Truman Bethurum, and Desmond Leslie. https://www.the-adamski-case.nl/his-life/mount-palomar/

1962 August 7 — Midnight. A contract worker at the not-yet-operational Titan II launch complex of the 570th Strategic Missile Squadron near Oracle, Arizona, sees a brilliant light descending over the site. He is joined by a colleague as the light gets larger. Both men go inside and contact Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson, which sends out two jet interceptors. When the aircraft arrive, the light takes off to the north and disappears rapidly. After the jets circle and head back, the light returns, descends toward the silo, and takes off vertically.

1966 August 7 — The Washington Star runs an article on UFOs by retired USAF Lt. Col. Charles Cooke saying that he has analyzed first-hand UFO encounters by Air Force pilots that show strong support for the ETH.

1968 August 7 — McDonald addresses the Boeing Management Association in Renton, Washington, on “UFO Investigations: Past, Present, and Future.”

1968 August 7 — 8:10 p.m. As a young man and woman watch from the end of a dock at Buff Ledge Camp [now closed] along the shore of Lake Champlain north of Burlington, Vermont, a bright light appears in the southwest sky and swoops down in a long arc until it stops and assumes a horizontal position. It now resembles a white, glowing, cigar-shaped object, possibly as far away as the Adirondack Mountains more than 10 miles from the witnesses. According to the young man, three tiny white lights emerge one at a time from the right-end bottom of the UFO. As soon as the third is expelled, the object retreats along its original path and vanishes seconds later. The three smaller objects perform a series of spectacular maneuvers, all the while moving closer. Afte 5 minutes the objects assume a horizontal triangle formation, and two head off in opposite directions, one to the north, the other to the south, making a sound like “thousands of different tuning forks.” The remaining object (40–50 feet across) moves toward the witnesses. It ascends and vanishes in three seconds, only to reappear moments later as it descends along the same trajectory and plunges broadside into the water. A sudden wind blows waves across the heretofore placid surface. Animals up and down the shore howl and shriek. A few minutes later the UFO surfaces and moves toward the witnesses. It stops 60 feet from them, hovering about 15 feet above the water. The young man can see two figures with large heads, oversized oval eyes, and small mouths. Visible to the waist, they are short and clothed in skintight gray or silver uniforms. Thus begins an abduction experience that was only uncovered through separate hypnotic sessions with each of the witnesses by Walter N. Webb years later. Webb’s background checks, buttressed by psychological analyses, convinces him that there is no question of a hoax, and he writes a comprehensive account of his investigation in Encounter at Buff Ledge: A UFO Case History https://www.ufocasebook.com/Buffledge.html

1970 August 7–12 — Evening. Contactee Paul Solem, who has managed to influence a number of Hopi Indian elders, among them Chief Dan Katchongva, that he is a true prophet heralding the coming of a True White Brother, publicly summons his space brother friends telepathically for 15 minutes in Prescott, Arizona, where UFOs have been reported over the previous few days. After Solem announces that “they’re here,” a “star” appears that had not been there before and Solem receives a message from space brother Paul 2, who tells him that the saucers are appearing because of a Hopi prophecy. Others see zigzagging lights in the sky over the next few nights, and Prescott Courier photographer Chuck Roberts takes a time-lapse photo of one.

1976 August 7 — 10:00 p.m. Mark Ziegelbauer, 15, of Malone, Wisconsin, and his father Orville see multi-coloured lights fly past their new silo and land in a distant hayfield. Mark drives over to the spot and shines his headlights into the field. He sees an object the size of a “camper-trailer” and two green men, one about 5 feet 7 inches, the other shorter. They put their hands up and “disappeared somehow.”

1976 August 7 — 11:48 p.m. The control tower at the Djerba-Zarzis International Airport, Tunisia, tracks a UFO on radar to the northwest. The sighting is confirmed by a Tunisair pilot, who says it is a lighted object that seems to touch down near the airport then turn south after climbing up.

AUGUST 8th

1946 August 8 — Chief of Swedish Air Defense Maj. Nils Ahlgren says that some of the rockets are seen at low altitude, manoeuvre in half circles, and appear to come from the south.

1952 August 8 — A special CIA/Office of Scientific Intelligence team consisting of Philip Grandin Strong, Ransom L. Eng, and Frederick C. Durant visits Wright-Patterson AFB for a comprehensive briefing about UFOs from Blue Book staff. This classified visit is in response to secret orders from President Truman to the CIA to investigate the Air Force’s mishandling of UFOs during the Washington National Airport cases.
1954 August 8 — 3:01 p.m. Project Magnet’s only UFO incident of note occurs when the Shirley’s Bay, Ontario, gravimeter indicates a greater deflection in the gravitational field than a conventional object would cause. Heavy clouds obstruct Wilbert Smith’s view of the sky. http://www.noufors.com/Wilbert_B_Smith.htm

1955 August 8 — The CIA’s Todos Odarenko writes an office memorandum recommending that the CIA should maintain a file of UFO sightings but deny that all investigations are inactive, and separate explainable UFOs from unidentifiable reports.

1958 August 8 — An informal two-hour hearing on UFOs is held by the House Subcommittee on Atmospheric Phenomena, chaired by Rep. William Natcher (D-Ky.), which is part of the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, chaired by Rep. John W. McCormack (D-Mass.). Although McCormack wants an extended hearing in closed secret session, unrecorded, ATIC Capt. George T. Gregory persuades him to allow the Air Force to give a briefing, while allowing people like Menzel, Ruppelt, and Keyhoe to offer their opinions later. NICAP as a whole should be excluded, he emphasizes. The main witnesses turn out to be Gregory and Maj. Tacker. The subcommittee, which also includes Kenneth Keating (R-N.Y.) and Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.), commends Gregory for his presentation on Project Blue Book’s “improved” methods. The hearings were to have been extended to the following week, but they decide to call no more witnesses at the suggestion of scientific consultant Dr. Charles S. Sheldon II, who thus maneuvers Keyhoe out of appearing. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1958-Aug-Sept.pdf

1965 August 8 — 11:30 p.m. A luminous UFO is allegedly photographed in Beaver, Pennsylvania, by James Lucci, 17. According to estimations by witnesses, the diameter of the UFO is around 42 feet. Lucci is photographing the full moon with his brother John, 23. According to them, a shining object appears from behind a hill. James manages to take two shots before the flying object leaves. His friends encourage him to send the photos to the Beaver County Times, where they are analyzed and declared authentic. However, both the Colorado project and UFO researchers determine the photo is a hoax created by holding a plate up next to the moon with a fist (probably John’s) and blurring it with motion.

1968 August 8 — Evangelical pastor Estanislao Lugo Contreras is on the shore at Catia La Mar, Vargas, Venezuela, when he sees the water stirring up in a vast round area. The water begins to turn light blue, them whitish, yellowish, then brilliant orange. An orange disc rises out of the sea about 1,650 feet from shore, hovers, then rises obliquely and disappears. It makes an intense buzzing sound. http://www.waterufo.net/item.php?id=366

1968 August 8 — 8:40 p.m. An object shaped like a sharply outlined asymmetrical crescent flies over the Kislovodsk Mountain Astronomical Station near Kislovodsk, North Caucasus, Russia. The object is slightly smaller than the moon with a color described as reddish by some observers, yellow by others. It flies from west to east about 20° above the horizon, moving from the Big Dipper to Cassiopeia in about 30 seconds at a uniform speed. The witnesses are Anatoli Sazanov, a specialist in the ionosphere; V. A. Tsion of the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute; and seven members of a biological expedition.

1976 August 8 — 7:50 p.m. Radar at Sidi Ahmed Air Base at Bizerte Airport, Tunisia, tracks a target going east to west. It turns south and disappears. Tunisian authorities contact the US State Department asking whether the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean can shed any light on the incidents.

1978 August 8 — 9:40 p.m. Witnesses in Belton, Missouri, and several military personnel at nearby Richards-Gebaur Air Reserve Station [now closed] witness the flyover of a UFO that is also briefly tracked on radar. Joseph Staudinger Jr. sees the object at about 2,800 feet in altitude and looking like two white strobe lights in front and back with three rows of red lights that are rotating around its middle. The encounter lasts 45 minutes. A cattle mutilation has been discovered earlier that day in Elsberry, Missouri.

1980 August 8–9 — Before 12:00 midnight. Three security policemen on the eastern side of the Manzano Weapons Storage Area adjacent to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, see a bright light descend in a restricted area about 3 miles to the north-northeast. It travels quickly and stops suddenly over Coyote Canyon. At 12:20 a.m., a Sandia guard observes a disc-shaped object with a bright light hovering behind a building. He approaches it with a shotgun and attempts to use his radio, but it has stopped working. The object shoots straight up. These and other incidents result in a report being filed with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Kirtland. The incident is subsequently investigated by agent Richard Doty, who files a preliminary report on the incident. The document is leaked to William Moore in January 1982 and obtained in a subsequent FOIA request by Barry Greenwood. Moore and Bruce Maccabee both interview Doty, who says there are most likely other documents including a longer report that he had written up. However, after Noah Lawrence at AFOSI Headquarters tells Maccabee there are no other documents on file, Doty begins to backtrack. Maccabee also meets Russ Curtis inside the Manzano area who says that the incident never took place (which contradicts Curtis’s statement to Moore in 1982). http://brumac.mysite.com/kirtland1.html

1981 August 8 — 6:15 p.m. A witness is on the beach with some friends on the Hel peninsula, north of Gdynia, Poland. He leaves them briefly to go back to a camping area and sees, 500 feet in front of him, “two boys in dark suits” dashing into the bushes on his right. A moment later they reappear, standing on the path in front of him. They are 5 feet tall, wear green suits, and have green faces with big, almond-shaped eyes and slits for mouths. He can see dark boxes, violet and yellow cables, and tapes and spirals hanging from belts on the entities. He notices a silvery object and receives a telepathic message to “not be afraid.” He walks closer to them and hears another message: “Keep walking. Don’t stop.” The witness has the curious sensation of “passing through the interior of a ball.” He walks past them, looks back, and they have disappeared. On his right, the silvery disc, 6 feet high and 16–20 feet long, is hovering only 3 feet above the ground. Investigators later find seven odd oval marks where the object had been.

1993 August 8 — Early morning. Kelly Cahill and her husband Andrew are returning from a party in Narre Warren North, in the Dandenong Foothills of Victoria, Australia, and are near Eumemmerring Creek south of Belgrave when they see a huge lighted object with windows in front of them on the road. It seems to have people in it, but it quickly shoots off to the left and disappears. They continue driving, and about one kilometre ahead they encounter another bright light. Her husband continues driving, and they do not recall anything else until they get home. They agree they saw a UFO but can’t agree on whether they had missing time or saw people. They both can smell vomit and feel stomach pains. Kelly notices a triangular mark below her navel, which is bleeding a bit. Kelly has a strange dream immediately after the encounter, and two subsequent dreams in September, October 23, and January 1994—all involving entities and a “strange physical dimension.” A few weeks later, both of them start remembering that the UFO has landed in an adjacent field and that they get out of the car to look at it. An abduction scenario ensues involving tall black beings. They also recall that there is another car stopped by the road with at least two people in it. By November 17, Phenomena Research Australia has located the couple in the other car and a woman who was with them. They have also undergone an abduction experience and have missing time. These witnesses, unknown to the Cahills, confirm the UFO landing site, and their drawings of the UFOs and entities closely coincide with Kelly’s. The second group also recalls seeing a third car with one male who is gazing fixedly toward the encounter site. Unfortunately, Kelly’s account of the incident is the only one that has come to light.

1995 August 8 — Two airliners, one from TAM and the other from Rio Sul Serviços Aéreos Regionais, watch a UFO over Macapá, Amapá, Brazil. TAM Cmdr. Marcos Aurélio de Castro reports that he and his copilot see a metallic glow ahead of them to the right. The air traffic center cannot see anything but notes that the Rio Sul flight has reported something similar 5 minutes earlier. Suddenly the silvery object approaches the TAM aircraft. The sighting lasts about 10 minutes.

AUGUST 6th

1946 August 6 — The US delegation in Budapest, Hungary, reports that a German scientist now working for the Russians has revealed that the Soviets have developed guided rockets called V-3 and V-4 that are able to fly a round trip of 700 miles.

1947 August 6 — An FBI memo from E. G. Fitch to D. Milton Ladd identifies either Brown or Davidson as a CIC agent on a top-secret mission. http://www.jasoncolavito.com/inquiry-into-shaver-and-palmer.html

1952 August 6 — Hynek sends Blue Book a “Special Report on Conferences with Astronomers on Unidentified Aerial Objects.” He has interviewed 45 astronomers on UFOs at a June meeting of the American Astronomical Society and found that five (11%) have seen a UFO, seven are indifferent to the subject, more express at least some interest, and a few are very interested but wary of publicity. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 6 — 9:00 p.m. James J. Allen sees a UFO 6 feet high, 8 feet long, and lighted inside strike the chimney of his home in West Lumberton, North Carolina. It crashes into his backyard. When he approaches it, the lights go off and he sees a man about 30 inches tall standing next to it. He asks if he is hurt, then the figure re-enters the vehicle and it zooms away. https://thesaucersthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2018/01/james-j-allens-alien-encounter.html

1953 August 6 — 5:00 p.m.–12:00 midnight. An estimated 75 objects with lights are seen by many witnesses on the ground around Naval Air Station Barbers Point [now Kalaeloa Airport], Hawaii, from the airport control tower and from the air. Many are also detected by radar. At 9:00 p.m., the crew of a Navy patrol aircraft reports three head-on passes. These close calls alarm the pilot so much he lands immediately. Jet fighters are scrambled and the same night an interceptor pilot sees a “glowing blob” rising rapidly toward him. It comes to a sudden stop just behind his aircraft then accelerates briefly until it is beside him for four more seconds before accelerating away out of sight at several times his own top speed. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1953-Aug-Dec.pdf

1954 August 6 — A bright white ball shoots across the sky over Santa Fe, New Mexico, leaving a luminous trail that persists for 15 minutes. Meteorite expert Lincoln LA Paz says it is not a meteor. It apparently disrupts TV signals and aircraft transmissions, but not ham radio.

1976 August 6 — 12:20 a.m. Police at La Soukra, Tunisia, see four lighted objects that disappear one by one until 1:45 a.m.

1976 August 6 — 10:00 a.m. A family is driving in Gaspésie National Park, Quebec, when a beam of red light penetrates the fog and creates a six-inch circle on the road ahead. The beam paces ahead of them for several miles, then collapses and withdraws upwards. A dazzling white light then approaches and stops ahead. Strong heat builds up in the car, so the father stops the vehicle. The headlights and radio fail, and the engine dies. All four get out and walk toward the object, which now appears as a scallop-shaped craft on landing legs, stretching across the road. The wife notices a massive “face” looking at them. Two 7-foot-tall beings are apparently floating near the UFO, dressed in close-fitting, khaki-brown suits. The witnesses flee back into the car. The object moves away in a flash of light and burst of heat. The car starts again. All four suffer from itching for the next 10 hours. http://www.nicap.org/reports/760806quebec_report.htm

2001 August 6 — Afternoon. Two Turkish Air Force pilots from 122 Squadron are practicing maneuvers in a Cessna T-37B Dragonfly jet trainer over the Gulf of Çandarli, an inlet of the Aegean Sea in western Turkey. 1Lt. Ilker Dinçer and his student Lt. Arda Gunyel are surprised by an extremely bright object, shaped like something between a
disc and a cone, with a pod on its lower part. Griond control has nothing on its radar. The UFO approaches the Cessna at high speed, then positions itself alongside, behind, and above the jet. It plays cat and mouse with the plane for some minutes before it disappears at high speed. The Turkish Air Force announces that it is a weather balloon.

2018 August 6 — 11:20 p.m. A resident of Heemstede, Netherlands, is skywatching when he suddenly sees a silent triangular object with three white lights moving faster than an airplane.

AUGUST 5th

1927 August 5 — Explorer Nicholas Roerich and others in his caravan observe a UFO near Qinghai Lake, Tibet. “We all saw, in the direction north to south, something big and shiny reflecting sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp this thing changed in its direction from south to southwest, and we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly the oval form with the shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun.” http://www.nicap.org/270805himalayasdir.htm

1942 August 5 — Early morning. The Navy destroyer USS Helm is on its way to the Solomon Islands in preparation for the Guadalcanal landings. A radio blackout is in effect. An aircraft approaches, a full alert is sounded, and three cruisers (Vincennes, Quincy, Astoria) and seven other ships open fire on it. The object is not hit and proceeds to circle around the fleet. An anonymous sailor on security detail on the Helm watches it through binoculars and sees it as 90 feet in diameter, oval, with a round dome on top. The ships continue to fire on the UFO, which attains extremely high speeds. Commanding Officer Chester Edward Carroll later hears that the aircraft is neither German nor Japanese.

1946 August 5 — 6:26 p.m. A luminous object is seen by a motorist near Landskrona, Skåne, Sweden.
August 5 — 11:00 p.m. A fast-moving, silent, circular object glitters in the sun over Skåne, Sweden, as it heads toward the south-southwest at a high altitude. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf

1948 August 5 — This date given by Edward Ruppelt for the lost “Estimate of the Situation,” in which Project Sign concludes that UFOs are interplanetary, is probably too early.

1950 August 5 or 15 — 11:30 a.m. Nicholas Mariana and his secretary Virginia Raunig are inspecting the Great Falls, Montana, baseball stadium in preparation for a game. He walks up to the grandstand and notices two fast-moving bright lights “like two new dimes in the sky.” He rushes to his car, parked 60 feet away, and gets his 16mm movie camera from the glove compartment. He films the objects passing behind a water tower, which provides a frame of reference for measuring distance, size, altitude, azimuth, and speed. In October he takes it to an Air Force officer for analysis. USAF notes that two jet interceptors were in the area and might be the objects on the film, but Mariana and Raunig had seen those too. Controversy soon arises when Mariana claims that the first 35 frames of his film—which he says most clearly show the UFOs as rotating disks—are missing. People in the Great Falls area who view Mariana’s film support him. They claim that the missing frames clearly show the UFOs as spinning, metallic disks with a “notch or band” along their outer edges. USAF personnel deny this accusation and insist that they have removed only a single frame of film that was damaged in the analysis. In 1952, Blue Book reviews the film; so does Robert M. L. Baker Jr. in 1954, and the Colorado project in 1967. All studies of the film agree that it was not faked and that the objects appear to be disc-shaped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGIH7ufiBII ; http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/07/can-you-learn-anything-from-ufo-photos_07.html ; http://www.nicap.org/500815greatfalls_dir.htm ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_UFO_incident

1952 August 5 — Day. During a daylight observation of Venus, astronomer James C. Bartlett Jr. watches two discs fly overhead in a southerly direction at Baltimore, Maryland. They move away to the east, then two more objects with dome-like protrusions in the center fly past.

1952 August 5 — 9:46–12:00 midnight. A visual sighting is made at 9:46 p.m. by an observer on the ground at Manassas, Virginia, who spots a brilliant oval flying south. About 10:50 p.m., Andrews AFB picks up two unidentified blips moving slowly and steadily away from Washington, D.C., on a course toward Mount Vernon, Virginia. Minutes later the fluorescent screens at Andrews show two more UFOs to the east of the field moving for a short distance, stopping, and then moving again. The speed of the targets is a slow 60 mph. The height of the targets is unknown. Planes from both Andrews AFB and Bolling AFB are sent up to investigate but rainy weather forces them to turn back after they reach 15,000 feet altitude. Around 12:00 midnight yet another target appears on radar, and jets from New Castle AFB in Delaware are scrambled. The jets see no UFOs when they arrived over Washington; however, a spokesman for Anderws radar tells the press that “no radar sightings were made while the planes were overhead.” https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Aug.pdf

1952 August 5 — 10:45 p.m. Eight residents of Camden, New Jersey, report a bright, round, orange object hovering or moving slowly in the western sky.
1952 August 5 — 11:45 p.m. A complex radar-visual sighting takes place at Haneda AFB [later Tokyo International Airport], Japan. Control tower operators watch a disc as it passes over Tokyo Bay at about 1,500 feet. It is a dark round shape surrounded by a bright light with a curved outer edge and smaller lights around it. While being tracked on radar, a scramble alert is issued at 11:55 p.m., and an F-94 Starfire jet from nearby Johnson Air Base [now Iruma Air Base] in Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, goes after the object. The interceptor, piloted by 1Lt. Wesley R. Holder and Radar Observer 1Lt. Aaron M. Jones Jr., chases the object, which speeds away while being tracked by onboard radar. During the next 30 minutes, the UFO disappears and reappears throughout the sky, vanishes when the jet closes in, performs intricate maneuvers, and at one point splits into three radar targets. The jet searches over Tokyo Bay until 12:33 a.m. when it is recalled. http://www.nicap.org/520805haneda_dir.htm

1953 August 5–6 — Around 8:00 p.m. Ground Observer Corps observer Phyllis Killian spots a UFO in Black Hawk, South Dakota. Soon after, radar at Ellsworth AFB near Rapid City tracks a “well-defined, solid, and bright” object. The base scrambles an F-84 and the pilot sees the UFO. Many witnesses see the object accelerate and climb. The F-84 pursues but can reach no closer than 3 miles. Now low on fuel, the F-84 returns, followed by the UFO. Immediately, another F-84 is sent up. Before long, the pilot receives strong radar returns of a target right in front of him. Fear prevails and he breaks off the chase. The UFO goes off the scope, traveling northeast. Reports soon come from Brunswick of a fast-moving, bright blue object, similar to the Rapid City object. It hovers near an air filter center, performing more maneuvers and disappearing after midnight. Before it leaves, three more UFOs are seen at 10,000 feet for three hours. Ruppelt personally investigates and calls it “the best” in the USAF files, Hynek writes that the “entire incident…has too much of an Alice-in-Wonderland flavor for comfort.” Menzel blames the star Capella. The official file is several hundred pages long. http://www.nicap.org/530805ellsworth_dir.htm;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth_UFO_sighting ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1953-Aug-Dec.pdf

1957 August 5 — 10:00 p.m. Policeman Ernst W. Akerberg and his wife Karin are at their summer cottage on the island of Gotland, Sweden, in the Baltic Sea when they see a disc-shaped object heading toward them from the sea. When it reaches the shore about 600 feet away, the object changes course and executes a sharp turn at less than 90° of arc and turns on its edge, swaying briefly. The disc moves toward the southeast and makes another sharp turn just over a half-mile away, again turning on its edge and fluttering before passing out of view. A second, smaller object approaches and goes through the same maneuvers. Air currents from both objects make the water surface ripple and the treetops swing. Estimated to be about 80 feet in diameter, the objects seem to be made of shining metal, and the upper part rotates slowly over the lower part. Both objects have a kind of tube with two red lights. They are silent except for a hollow clicking sound.

1961 August 5 — 8:20 a.m. A “snowy white meshlike substance” floats to the ground from 12 white metallic discs traveling in pairs over Mount Hale, 50 miles northwest of Meekatharra, Western Australia. Witnesses who pick up the material see it fade away in their hands. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1961-July-Dec.pdf

1985 August 5 — 8:15 p.m. Antiaircraft batteries open fire on a UFO that is flying from west to east over northeastern Tehran, Iran. They apparently miss. The batteries believe the object is an Iraqi warplane.

1992 August 5 — 1:45 p.m. Pilots of United Airlines Flight 934 are flying at 23,000 feet some 50 miles northeast of George AFB [now Southern California Logistics Airport], Victorville, California, when an unusual aircraft comes directly toward them and passes underneath at an estimated distance of 500–1,000 feet. It resembles the forward fuselage of a Lockheed S-71, without wings but with a sort of tail. The size is about 50 feet long and its speed is supersonic.

2000 August 5 —11:30 a.m. A witness spots a silver disc in the sky over Old Noarlunga, South Australia, and calls out his wife to watch. Over the next 90 minutes they see 3 whitish additional balls and something that looks like a helicopter, all traveling west to east. Long, silver, cobweb-like substance falls in large wads or strands. Once touched with a stick, it shrivels up and evaporates. Similar material falls on Moana and Aldinga Beach, where one witness also sees a bright light.

2010 August 5 — The UK National Archives releases another 5,000 pages of UFO files to the public. This release alone generates 196 separate news items and reaches a readership of 25 million people.

AUGUST 4th

1947 August 4 — Pilots Capt. Jack Peck and Vince Daly see a smooth UFO northwest of Bethel, Alaska, dead ahead as they are flying a DC-3 for Al Jones Flying Service. Peck hauls back on his controls to bring his plane up to safer altitude. Now 1,000 feet higher, the pilots glance downward and spot the UFO closer but on a changed course. Still dark against the sky, it looks to be as large as a C-54. Intrigued, Peck dives on the object as it pulls away, doing his best to get a better view, but it speeds up to an estimated 500 mph and is lost to view in four minutes. http://www.project1947.com/fig/bethel.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/470804bethel_dir.htm

1950 August 4 — A memo from Army Maj. Ulysses Grant Carlan states that UFOs since July 30 have been seen at the Hanford Site in Washington. They are above 15,000 feet. Jets attempting interception fail. The AEC says that the investigation is continuing. http://www.nicap.org/docs/foia11.htm; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1950-Apr-July-SN.pdf

1950 August 4 — The crew (Master Nils Lewring, Chief Mate Jacob Koelwyn) of the M/V Marcala in the North Atlantic between Nova Scotia and the US Eastern seaboard watch an aluminum-colored cylinder-shaped UFO, apparently 10 feet in diameter, 50–100 feet above the surface. It initially moves 25 mph, makes no noise, wobbles slightly, disappears over the horizon, then reappears. The ship’s captain watches the object through binoculars for 90 seconds. One of the other witnesses describes the sighting as “one of the most frightening experiences I have ever had.” http://www.nicap.org/500804northatlantic_dir.htm

1954 August 4 — 11:00 p.m.–12:00 midnight. Ten firemen and their chief observe two flying saucers over The Hague, Netherlands. The objects are seen in the clear night air at a high altitude. They move at incredible speed, at times remaining motionless for as long as 30 seconds. They are described as flat ovals with whitish-gray light. All agree that the objects are neither aircraft or balloons.

1961 August 4 — Rep. Thomas N. Downing (D-Va.) advises NICAP that the House Science and Astronautics Committee is considering hearings on UFOs by a three-man subcommittee headed by Rep. Joseph Karth. Meanwhile, Rep. Overton Brooks meets privately with Hillenkoetter and Keyhoe, asking them to prepare the best cases and proof of official censorship for a meeting on August 24.

1965 August 4 — 1:30 a.m. Don Tenopir, 44, is driving a truck on State Highway 15 about 25 miles south of Abilene, Kansas (south of Elmo), when all his lights go out. They come back on intermittently. A UFO passes just above his truck with a wind-like sound and hovers about 100 feet in front of him. Tenopir stops his rig, and the object slowly rises and takes off to the southwest. It seems to be 14–15 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick with a 4-foot hump in the middle, and orange-colored. It is shooting off rays in spurts. He stops in Abilene to report his sighting to Abilene Reflector-Chronicle reporter Ed Corwin.

1965 August 4 — Night. Radar operators at Calumet Air Force Station [now operated by Keweenaw County] track 7–10 objects in V-formation traveling from southwest to north-northeast at about 9,000 mph over Lake Superior. The same night, radar targets at Duluth, Minnesota, are chased by USAF jets.

1967 August 4 — An engineer, Hugo Sierra Yepez, is fishing from his boat in the sea about 15 miles north of Arrecife [or La Guaira], Vargas, Venezuela, when he feels a vibration and the water begins to boil “in big bubbles, in a circle about six meters in diameter.” A gray-blue, flat globe emerges. As it hovers close to the surface, dripping water, he notices a revolving section with triangular windows. It ascends in a curve then shoots upward.

1976 August 4–5 — 10:43–10:52 p.m. An Air France pilot en route to Monastir, Tunisia, is followed by an unidentified object.

1979 August 4 — 10:35 p.m. Maria Artura and her grandson see a domed, disc-shaped object approach from the west over Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. Two humanoid beings with oversize heads are inside. The object stops and hovers above an apartment building on the other side of the street. It tilts to one side, returns to horizontal, then flies behind a tree, stops, and tilts the other way. Finally, it flies away to the west. (IUR 4, no. 3/4 https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1979-08-04-usa-canogapark.htm

2005 August 4 — 10:30 p.m. A witness in Fernandina Beach, Florida, sees two rose-red objects approach from the ocean and move silently to the south, disappearing in about 75 seconds. http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/045/S45453.html

2020 August 4 — Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approves the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The Department of the Navy, under the oversight of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the effort. The Department of Defense says it is establishing the UAPTF to improve its understanding of the nature and origins of UAPs. Its mission is to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security. Its mandate includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAPs when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is seeing. https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/fbclid/IwAR0TLQ5ARzj2TY76J9EELrJ4bTVZprEtKXNz8GxGYsO05WjlYV8UFKxGT-I/

AUGUST 3rd

1905 August 3 — 1:30 a.m. Farmer John A. Jackson is driving a herd of hogs from Silsbee (a former settlement 6 miles southwest of El Centro) to Imperial, California, when a bright light flashes on him from above. He is momentarily blinded, and the hogs start running away. Jackson sees it is a searchlight from an airship about 100 feet long and propelled by wings that move up and down. It has smaller lights along the sides. Jackson wakes up W. E. Wilsie, who lives nearby, and they watch it disappear to the northeast. Another farmer, A. J. Morey, also glimpses the airship.

1909 August 3 — Night. A man is riding in Waipawa, New Zealand, when his horse becomes nervous. He sees a large, gray, torpedo-shaped object passing overhead. Three persons are visible in it, one of whom shouts to him in an unknown language. The object rises to a great height, showing lights fore and aft. After circling around, it disappears behind a hill.

1947 August 3 — Smith contacts Maj. Sander, who relieves Arnold and Smith of all their fragments. He shows them a smelting lot where he finds similar pieces of slag. Smith and Arnold check out of the Winthrop Hotel.

1951 August 3 — 11:00 p.m. Walter N. Webb, nature counsellor at Camp Big Silver on the shore of Silver Lake in southern Michigan, 3 miles south of Pinckney, is showing two boy campers some celestial objects through a reflecting telescope. He sees a glowing, yellowish light moving westward at a low elevation in an undulating path over hills to the south. It disappears behind the hills before he can train his telescope on it.

1952 August 3 — 3:00 p.m. An Air Force master sergeant on the ship Santa Luisa observes three round, flat, metallic objects hovering at 30,000–40,000 feet some 10 miles away from his position at the mouth of the Rio Guayas near Isla Puná, Ecuador. After 5 seconds, one object dives to the west then turns back northwest. They all disappear after another 5 seconds. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1952a.htm

1952 August 3 — 4:15 p.m. Two huge silvery discs are observed visually and tracked on radar for 1 hour and 15 minutes over Hamilton AFB [now closed] near Novato, California. The ground observers are pilots Capt. Leslie R. Hadley, Capt. Wayne T. Perske, and 2d Lt. Duane A. Swimley. They dive at each other and manoeuvre like in a dogfight. After F-86s are dispatched to intercept, 6 more objects appear, take up a diamond formation, and accelerate out of sight. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1952_08_03_hamafb.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/520803hamilton_dir.htm ; http://www.project1947.com/fig/1952_08_03_US_CA_Hamilton_AFB_BB.pdf

1952 August 3 — 10:20 p.m. Civilian engineer Paul L. Anderson sees 3 light-green cylindrical objects at Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. They are hovering at 45° elevation in an inverted-V formation, switching to echelon when one object moves with a rolling motion along its long axis. It disappears by rapidly rising vertically. The observation lasts 9 minutes. http://www.nicap.org/520803truth_dir.htm

1956 August 3 — A press leak from the Air Force Association reveals that proposals for two types of UFO-detecting satellites are under development. A television subsystem is cancelled as impractical, but an infrared subsystem requires much lower data transmission rates. Lockheed has signed an Air Force contract. The CIA’s Richard M. Bissell later reveals that the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence Deputy Director Gen. Philip G. Strong has been pushing the Air Force to develop an infrared tracking satellite. The infrared system actually begins as planned in 1968, with initial operational status in 1970.

1957 August 3 — 7:45 p.m. 1st Lt. Robert J. Springer Jr., T/Sgt. Herman L. Giles, and 16 other air crewmen, while on routine Airborne Operations Center radar early warning patrol over the Pacific Ocean about 175 miles southwest of San Francisco aboard an RC-121D aircraft, detect a radar target on IFF Mode 2 transponder only. At 7:56 p.m., the IFF target becomes a direct radar “skin paint.” At 8:02 p.m., the IFF equipment APX-6/APX-7 is turned off, but the target is still tracked on airborne radar. At 8:15 p.m., the target is at a 2 o’clock position 10 miles away when the aircraft starts a right turn to reverse course, putting the target dead ahead. It suddenly takes off to the northwest at very high speed, disappearing 58 miles away. Radar contact is regained at 8:18 p.m. as the target is tracked moving right to left, crossing in front of the aircraft again, and closing distance to 8 miles at 11 o’clock. At 8:20 p.m., the target turns to head on a parallel path. The crew loses contact at 8:24 p.m.15 miles behind the plane. No visual confirmation. http://www.nicap.org/570803sanfrancisco_dir.htm

1958 August 3 — 2:25 a.m. A sudden violet-orange brightness illuminates the sky over Rome, Italy, for about 3 seconds. Lights in the city dim, failing completely in some areas. Physician Angelo Corsi witnesses it 37 miles southeast of Rome in Sgurgola. After his car radio fails, and the house and streetlights go out, he sees a long whitish trail like a fan in the sky. At 2:22 a.m., in Rieti a sergeant and some guards see a yellow-green cigar-shaped object moving rapidly toward the southeast. It leaves a luminous trail that lights up roads, mountains, and houses for several seconds. A similar sight is seen in Naples. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1958-Aug-Sept.pdf

1965 August 3 — 12:37 p.m. Los Angeles County Highway Accident Investigator Rex Heflin takes four clear Polaroid photos of a hat-shaped UFO on a lonely stretch of road near Santa Ana, California. The object is silent, and a beam of white light is rotating beneath it. He radios his supervisor, but the radio goes dead. One of Heflin’s coworkers offers to send the photos to Life magazine; he does, but Life declines to use them. Soon, someone from NORAD shows up demanding the prints and Heflin turns them over. They are not seen again. The photos are most likely a prank hoax by Heflin using a hubcap, complicated by flawed photographic analyses and investigations. http://www.nicap.org/650803santaana_dir.htm; http://www.nicap.org/reports/Goodbye_Rex_Heflin.pdf ; https://rr0.org/time/2/0/0/6/03/Heflins1965PhotosFinallyValidated/index.html

1973 Between August 3–6 — Night. A woman and her children are watching the stars in their backyard in San Antonio, Texas. Two “very perfect” cumulus clouds move into view low above them. A perfectly round sphere with a green glow slowly emerges from the top of the cloud on the left. Soon they see lightning going back and forth from the two clouds but never toward the ground. One lightning bolt hits the sphere and red sparks fly out, whereupon the sphere slowly re-enters the cloud. The clouds remain stationary for 35–40 minutes until the sphere disappears, then they float on.

1976 August 3–4 — 11:25 p.m. The pilot of Tunisair Flight Tu8953, en route from Monastir to Tunis, Tunisia, sees a flying object at 3,200–3,900 feet moving north to south. At 11:27 p.m., five objects showing red and green lights are seen over Monastir and confirmed on radar. From 12:24 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., five separate radar returns are tracked and visually confirmed.

1977 August 3–18 — Italian researchers Giovanni and Piero Mantero of the Centro Internazionale Richerche e Studi sugli UFO in Genoa hold a 15-day skywatch on Monte Verrugoli west of La Spezia, Italy. The mountain is known for reports of strange phenomena. During the skywatch a total of 108 nocturnal lights are observed, 82 appearing as points of light, 7 oblong in shape, 7 spherical, one like a tilted plate, 3 discoid, one like a half-moon, and 7 other miscellaneous forms. Most are yellow, but some are reddish or blue. Occasionally the unidentified lights seem to increase in luminosity in response to signals made with a flashlight. During their presence, dogs in the neighborhood bark almost constantly. The objects disappear when conventional aircraft appear in the sky. Sounds of breaking tree branches are heard, unidentified voices are registered on a tape recorder, wristwatches malfunction, and areas of flattened grass are found. On one of the last nights of the project, Giovanni Mantero claims to have seen a strange aerial entity with a transparent face.

1997 August 3 — The New York Times’s William J. Broad reports on a study, “The C.I.A.’s Role in the Study of U.F.O.’s, 1947–90,” by National Reconnaissance Office historian Gerald K. Haines in a CIA journal, Studies in Intelligence, that Project Blue Book had known that more than half of UFO reports in the 1950s and 1960s by citizens and aviation experts were based on “fleeting glimpses of U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.” Rather than acknowledging their existence, Blue Book came up with “false cover stories” like ice crystals and temperature inversions. Not a single linkage of a reconnaissance flight to a UFO report is provided. These allegations are treated uncritically in the news media. One-time Blue Book head Robert J. Friend says the story is “laughable” and denies ever having to conceal U-2 sightings. Bruce Maccabee points out that the greater number of UFO sighting are at night when U-2s cannot be seen, and even in the daytime a U-2 flying at 72,000 feet is “essentially invisible.” Haines also reveals that in the 1970s and 1980s CIA analysts devoted some time to “Counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.” http://brumac.mysite.com/cia_explaination.html ; https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/97unclass/ufo.html

2001 August 3 — Day. A Brazilian Air Force pilot and four others are taking supplies from Belém to Salvador, Brazil, aboard a C-130 Hercules transport. One of the military officers draws the colonel’s attention to a disc-shaped object that is accompanying the plane about 6t0 feet away. Ground control cannot detect anything on radar. The object has a brushed gray color and is the size of a bus. It has a dome at the top and flat at the bottom. The sighting lasts about 10 minutes.

AUGUST 2nd

1860 August 2 — 11:00 p.m. Another seeming procession of two meteors is observed in Norfolk, Virginia, moving with an undulating motion in the western sky in a northerly direction. One of the lights is clear red and the other is greenish, and they both emit flashes of light, leaving a sparkling trail. The phenomenon is also seen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some unnamed contemporary scientists compare it to the July 20 meteor procession.

1952 August 2 — 3:00 a.m. USAF 1st Lt. W. A. Theil and enlisted man Edwards see a red ball with a trail of blue flame fly straight and level over Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

1952 August 2 [or July 30] — George Hunt Williamson and his wife Betty are visited in Prescott, Arizona, by two other metaphysics enthusiasts, Alfred C. Bailey and his wife Betty of Winslow, Arizona. This evening, in the course of an automatic-writing experiment using a sort of Ouija board, they receive a message from an extraterrestrial in a spacecraft. In the days and weeks that follow, “Nah-9 of Solar X Group” and many other planetary and star people communicate with them. The space people call earth “Saras.” Nah-9 says that the good men of Saras must unite with good space people to avert a calamity. More Ouija sessions take place through August 17. A message comes through that they will be contacted via radio with an International Morse Code message on August 22. Bailey approaches a coworker on the Santa Fe Railroad, a ham radio operator named Lyman Streeter, and asks for his help in picking up the space signals.

1962 August 2 — Around 12:00 midnight. Air traffic control operators at Cambá Punta Airport [now Doctor Fernando Piragine Niveyro International Airport], near Corrientes, Argentina, see an unidentified light approaching the airport. They call the airport manager, Luís Harvey, who arrives from home in a hurry and sees the light circling at high speed. Harvey orders a landing strip freed up but the light, apparently a spherical object, comes down, hovering and revolving a few feet above the same spot on the runway for 3–4 minutes, emitting strong blue, green, and orange flashes. Then it climbs and vanishes at staggering speed. http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/cambapunta1962.htm ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1962-July-Dec.pdf 

1965 August 2 or 3 —1:30 a.m. Mr. A. L. Smith, accompanied by his 14-year-old son Alan and three other witnesses, watch an unusual, multicolored UFO over Tulsa, Oklahoma. The UFO is slowly moving toward the witnesses. Still several hundred yards away, it pauses briefly and hovers. At that precise moment, Alan snaps a photograph with his inexpensive camera, using ASA 64 film. Alan decides not to try for a second shot. He takes his camera inside the house and runs back outside just in time to see the object rapidly flying away into the night sky. The photo is a probable fake of a color wheel for an aluminum Christmas tree. http://www.nicap.org/650802tulsa_dir.htm 

1965 August 2 — Project Blue Book puts out an official USAF press release declaring the majority of the sightings on August 1 are “most likely” due to the planet Jupiter and the stars Rigel, Capella, Betelgeuse, and Aldebaran, “clearly visible in the eastern sky.” But astronomer Robert Risser of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium in Oklahoma City counters that Jupiter and the four stars are “on the opposite side of the earth” at the time of the sightings. 

1965 August 2 — 2:30 a.m. Unidentified blips show up on the Weather Bureau radar screen at the Wichita (Kan.) Municipal Airport [now Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport] and continue intermittently until after 6:00 a.m. Most of the sightings are in the vicinity of Wellington, Kansas. The altitude ranges from 5,000–20,000 feet. Wichita meteorologist John Shockley tracks several UFOs on the Weather Bureau radar flying at altitudes of 6,000–9,000 feet. His assistant Ellis Pike notes that they look just like airliner blips. They brighten and dim on the screen, moving at 45 mph. At least four citizens see colored glows in the southern sky during the early morning hours. One says: “They were red and exploded in a shower of sparks and at other times fluttered like a leaf in the clear sky.” http://www.nicap.org/650802wichita_dir.htm 

1965 August 2 — 3:00 a.m. Sherman, Texas, KXWI-TV news photographer Robert Campbell hears on his radio a conversation between Oklahoma and Texas highway patrolmen that a UFO has been tracked on radar and is streaking towards the Texas border. Campbell takes his 4-by-5 Speed Graphic camera and drives into town, where he locates Chief of Police Peter McCollum. Together they search for the object and soon see it hanging stationary one mile east of Bells on US Highway 82. The object has a “Mercury capsule” shape at one end, possibly rounded at the other end. Several distinct bands circle the cylinder, with disc-shaped embossments on the surface. He takes four camera exposures, two minutes each at three-minute intervals. The negatives are carefully examined by USAF scientific advisers and astronomical experts. No acceptable explanation can be found for the object recorded on the negatives. http://www.nicap.org/650802sherman_dir.htm; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=657 

1965 August 2 — As they patrol near Eagle Mountain Lake, two Tarrant County (Tex.) deputy sheriffs see an object as bright as burning magnesium land. An extensive investigation by police finds no traces.

1977 August 2 — Marauding UFOs destroy the town of Chester, Illinois, according to a hoax concocted by Official UFO magazine editor Myron Fass.

1989 August 2 — Richard L. Huff in the FBI Office of Information and Privacy affirms in a letter to researcher Larry W. Bryant that it keeps a classified personal file on Stanton T. Friedman and denies access to it.

AUGUST 1st

1871 August 1 — 10:43 p.m. Astronomer Jérôme Eugène Coggia at Marseille Observatory, France, watches a slow, blood-red fireball move across the sky and change course twice before falling to the earth. He sees it for 20 minutes and 20 seconds. Possible earth-grazing meteor or a candle balloon.

1946 August 1 — President Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. It categorizes information on atomic energy as “born classified,” even if it is not created by any US government agency. “Restricted Data” is not a level of classification; rather, a document can be classified as Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret, while also containing Restricted Data. In addition, a document containing Restricted Data can also contain Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information. In this way, a document can be classified as Secret (S), Secret//Restricted Data (S//RD), or Secret//Restricted Data-Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information (S//RD-CNWDI), depending on the type of information it contains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Atomic_Energy_Commission

1946 August 1 — Truman approves the establishment of the Office of Naval Research for “planning, fostering, and encouraging scientific research” in relation to naval power and national security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Research

1946 August 1 —Col. Edwin Kennedy Wright, Vandenberg’s executive assistant at the Central Intelligence Group, sends a memorandum to President Truman saying the ghost rockets conform to a V-1 shape and seem to be launched from the USSR. The report notes that the missiles can turn and fly circular courses, seemingly indicating radio control. Most information comes from the military attaché in Sweden and the conclusions are from the director of intelligence for the War Department general staff. 

1946 August 1 — 6:00 p.m. AF Capt. Jack E. Puckett is flying over Tampa, Florida, in a C-47 transport and sees a long cylinder twice the size of a B-29 with luminous portholes. After 3 minutes, it disappears at a speed of 1,500 mph.

1947 August 1 — Brown and Davidson make a stop at McChord Field near Tacoma, Washington, to speak with intelligence officer Maj. George Sander, then board the B-25 for Hamilton Field. It explodes and crashes near Kelso, Washington, at 1:30 a.m., 20 minutes after taking off, when the left engine catches fire. An army hitchhiker and engineer parachute to safety. Brown and Davidson fail to signal distress or bail out. After hearing the news, Arnold calls Palmer and offers to return his money. Palmer says to just mail him some fragments. Arnold and Smith visit Morello and Dahl and Crisman. They talk to reporter Tacoma Times reporter Paul Lantz in the hotel lobby, who writes the article “Sabotage Hinted in Crash of Army Bomber at Kelso.” Debris from the crash is not discovered until 2007. http://www.nwlegendsmuseum.com/MauryIsland.html 

1952 August 1 — 10:51 a.m. An Air Defense Command radar site on Campbell Hill at Bellefontaine, Ohio, tracks a target 20 miles NNW of Wright-Patterson AFB, traveling 500 mph against the wind. It vectors two F-86s piloted by Maj. James B. Smith and Lt. Donald J. Hemmer. They make visual contact but climb to 48,000 feet twice without reaching it. Smith gets a weak return on his radar gun sight and shoots a gun camera film of a white or silvery sphere estimated at 60,000 feet. They break off the intercept at 11:13 a.m. about 100 miles west-southwest of Dayton. The film reportedly shows a UFO in the upper right of the frames with noticeable motion to the lower left. Although Blue Book Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt’s assistants Lt. Anderson G. Flues and Lt. Robert Olsson initially declare the case an “unknown,” Ruppelt changes that evaluation a few weeks later after ATIC Technical Analysis Division Chief Col. Donald L. Bower transfers out, explaining it as two separate but coincidental IFOs—a weather balloon and a jet. Ruppelt goes to great lengths to debunk the case in his ADC briefings to the Robertson Panel. http://www.nicap.org/520801troy_dir.htm https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/bellefontaine52.htm ; 

1952August 1 — Edward Tauss, acting chief of the Weapons and Equipment Division of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, writes a letter to OSI Deputy Assistant Director Ralph L. Clark, saying that less than 100 credible reports remain unexplainable. “interplanetary aspects and alien origin not being thoroughly excluded from consideration.” He recommends the CIA continue to cooperate with ATIC, but “no indication of CIA interest or concern reach the press or public.” 

1952 August 1 — 8:30–9:00 p.m. We, the People, a 30-minute TV news show produced by Life magazine, devotes its airtime to the recent UFO sightings over Washington, D.C. WNBW-TV, which originates the program, rents a DC-3 airliner, fills it with 20 newsmen, and has the plane circle over Washington, just in case the saucers return. On the ground in the radar room of Washington National Airport there are more newsmen and TV cameras. The show features editors and journalists Frank Blair, David Brinkley, Clay Blair, and various UFO witnesses. https://thesaucersthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2018/07/ufos-on-tv-1952-washington-dc-saucer.html 

1952 August 1 — 9:50 p.m. Scripps-Howard reporter Howard Doyle Kline sees a cluster of glowing white objects overhead in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The objects shift around into various patterns, including a perfect V at one point. Their shifts in position are incredibly swift and fantastically violent, he says. “They made a flying saucer believer out of me.”

1963 August 1 — Evening. A former RAF pilot and flight instructor sees a triangular UFO that lingers for a long time over Garston, Hertfordshire, UK, then climbs out of sight. Thousands of other people in the London area, including an air traffic controller four miles away and future UFO researcher Timothy Good in Beckenham, London, also see the object, which has a tetrahedral shape and glassy appearance when seen through binoculars. A USAF F-100 Super Sabre from RAF Bentwaters [now Bentwaters Parks] in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and another plane from the De Havilland Aircraft Company are sent up to investigate but cannot get anywhere near the UFO, which is at an estimated 90,000 feet. An amateur astronomer in Bushey, Hertfordshire, takes a clear photo. The official explanation is a balloon.

1965 August 1 — 1:30–4:30 a.m. Various personnel from Francis E. Warren Air Force Base west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, report more than 70 UFOs near the base’s ICBM Minuteman I launch control facilities (LCFs) and launch facilities (LFs, missile silos). A Lieut. Anspaugh logs the reports and incoming telephone calls for three hours. The reports begin with a “large circular object emitting several colors but no sound” seen by civilians over Cheyenne itself at 1:30 a.m. This results in an alert at the base for all personnel to be on the watch for anything suspicious. Five objects are spotted over the Sioux Army Depot [now closed] in Sydney, Nebraska, at 1:45 a.m. Two UFOs are seen over the Echo LCF southeast of Pine Bluff at 1:48 a.m. Nine more objects are sighted at 2:50 a.m. The Echo LCF reports six UFOs stacked vertically. A Strategic Air Command team at the H-2 LF northeast of Gurley reports a white UFO directly overhead at 3:00 a.m. The Sioux Army Depot reports five objects going east at 3:35 a.m. Reports of white, round- or oval-shaped objects in various formations, continue solidly at the H-2 LF for the next 40 minutes. At 4:05 a.m., the Warren base commander calls to say that the Quebec LCF southwest of Chugwater has nine UFOs in sight: four to the NW, three to the NE, and two over Cheyenne. Sightings continue to be reported the next two nights at missile sites assigned to Warren AFB, for a total of 148 objects seen by 143 combat defense force airmen, missile maintenance men, and NCOs. The sheer scope and blatant ostentation of the UFOs’ reported aerial displays over a sensitive atomic missile base is remarkable. 

1965 August 1 — 8:08 p.m. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol starts receiving 25–30 visual sightings of UFOs, many by police and highway patrol troopers from Purcell north to Norman to Chandler and back south through Meeker and Shawnee. The sightings continue through dawn and vary from one to four objects that start and stop, often having a red color and varying to a white and blue lustre. http://www.nicap.org/docs/650730wynnewood_docs.pdf

1965 August 1 — 9:08 p.m. Four objects, bluish-white with a red haze, are seen from the control tower at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma City. T/Sgt John R. Lang, 34, is the watch supervisor. All the objects appear at approximately 22,000 feet altitude. One is moving south, and another is moving north at speeds of 150–200 mph. Two of the objects appear stationary. The 746th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron reports radar contact with one object at 10,000 feet in the vicinity of Norman, Oklahoma, 20 miles south of Tinker AFB. The duration is 90 minutes. An Air Force weather observer, who wishes to remain anonymous, looks at a UFO through his 40x-telescope at Oklahoma City. It is tilted about 45° then straightens out. “It looked like Saturn with a flat top and flat bottom.” http://www.nicap.org/650801tinker_dir.htm

1965 August 1 — Night. A TWA Boeing 707 airliner flying west of Topeka, Kansas, picks up 12–15 targets on Air Intercept Radar flying toward them at high speed on a 50-mile scope. They change to a 20-mile scope and observe the objects approaching in formation. The pilot, copilot, and engineer all witness this clearly. The aircraft passes the objects but cannot see them visually. Two films of the scopes are taken. http://www.nicap.org/650801topekadir.htm

1965 August 1 — Night. Two rookie police officers in Caldwell, Kansas, speed toward the airport to investigate local sightings when they see an egg-shaped machine bout 300 feet long hovering above the ground. They try to get closer, but it disappears behind a hedgerow and shuts its lights off. They return the next day, but find no traces,

1979 August 1 — 1:35 a.m. Westchester County police officer William Shaughnessy sees apparently the same white ball of light at the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, New York, as that reported by several citizens of Lewisboro the same night. It passes southeast directly over his car, at 600–800 feet altitude. It stops above some treetops, makes a complete right turn, and disappears to the west. 12 minutes later, it comes flying back, hovers, shoots over his car again, and is gone quickly. During this time, Shaughnessy cannot reach his station by either low-band FM or portable radio. 

1979 August 1 — US Air Force Intelligence is redesignated the Electronic Security Command. 

1979 August 1 — The Fund for UFO Research is established as a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia to raise money to support scientific UFO research and public information projects. It remains active through 2011. 

1979 August 1 — Astronomer Allan Hendry publishes The UFO Handbook, a harshly pessimistic assessment of his investigative experience with the Center for UFO Studies. The first part covers IFOs, showing how normal objects can be misinterpreted as UFOs. The remainder of the book covers techniques that can be used by UFO investigators.