********** New Episode of The Unconventional UFOlogist ********

Episode 3 – The Trumbull County UFO Incident 1994 https://youtu.be/TW6th08HpX8

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DECEMBER 31st

1952 December 31 — Project Blue Book issues its Status Report #8, classified “confidential.” https://www.slideshare.net/alexpituba/projects-grudge-and-bluebook-reports-1-12-nicap

1974 December 31 — The Privacy Act, signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford, establishes a Code of Fair Information Practice that governs the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personally identifiable information about individuals maintained in systems of records by federal agencies. The act also provides individuals with a means by which to seek access to and amend their records, and it sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements. Each agency must file an annual report on its FOIA requests to Congress. Citizens can also petition courts to render decisions on whether or not to release documents from agencies. FOIA soon disproves the longstanding denial of interest in UFOs by the CIA, FBI, and military agencies.

1978 December 31 — 12:10 a.m. Quentin Fogarty, a reporter for Melbourne’s 0/10 Network assigned to do a story on the Vern Powell sighting 10 days earlier, has chartered an Argosy cargo plane, piloted by Capt. William Startup and First Officer Robert Guard. While flying from Wellington to Christchurch with David Crockett and his wife Ngaire as camera crew over the Cook Strait near the site of the Powell sighting, Startup and Guard see 6–7 bright, pulsating lights like Chinese lanterns above the sea off Kaikoura. They fade and disappear, then return to view. Crockett starts filming. Wellington is tracking a target a mile behind the aircraft that stays on the screen for about one minute without moving. Another, stronger target appears to the right of the plane. Fogarty manages to crack, “Let’s hope they’re friendly!” Twice, Startup vainly attempts a 360° turn to get a glimpse of the object. After landing at Christchurch, Startup invites the passengers to accompany him back to Blenheim. Fogarty, Crockett, and another journalist, Dennis Grant, agree to do so. The plane flies out at 2:15 a.m., and within 2 minutes aircraft radar picks up a target 37 miles away. Startup turns toward it, but it moves to the right and vanishes almost immediately. Other radars pick up targets intermittently. The object returns in view of the plane, moving toward it, then drops out of sight to the right. Afterward, Fogarty notices a strange light that seems to be coming from the cargo hold. Two pulsating white lights soon appear on the port side of the plane. One settles into a rolling, turning pattern and falls at an incredible speed. This sequence Crockett captures on film. Bruce Maccabee spends 10 days in New Zealand and Australia interviewing witnesses and analyzing the film, which he concludes does not have any mundane explanation.

1982 December 31 — Around 11:50 p.m. An off-duty police officer and his family see a boomerang-shaped object drift slowly over their home near Kent Cliffs, New York. They can see a solid structure with roughly 15 red, green, and white lights anchored to its underside. It maintains a constant altitude of about 490 feet, moves at a gentle walking pace, and makes only a faint hum. As it passes over, he feels a deep vibration in his chest. At one point, the lights go out and three blinding white lights in the shape of a triangle appear in their place. About 5 seconds later, the colored ones return, and the object drifts out of sight. Warehouse foreman Edwin Hansen, 55, sees what appears to be the same object as he is driving down Interstate 84, just moments later. Hansen, among others, stops on the side of the road after spotting a boomerang-shaped formation of lights that project a bright beam of light to the ground. It is so large that it fills the sky in front of him, and it makes slow, tight circles in the air. Just as he thinks he’d like to get a closer look, the object moves in his direction. He panics as it approaches, but then hears a voice in his head that tells him not to be afraid. At the same time, the object turns away and the beam goes out. Hansen says that he “felt thoughts that weren’t [his] own,” and believes that he has received a telepathic communication from the UFO.

DECEMBER 30th

1933 December 30 — Swedish customs sends a request for air support to Gen. Eric Virgin, head of the Swedish Air Force, to help apprehend the ghost fliers who could be smuggling liquor into Sweden. However, he is cautious and wants more information to evaluate.

1947 December 30 — Gen. Laurence C. Craigie, director of USAF R&D and successor to Gen. Curtis LeMay (who has returned to Europe), advises the AMC commanding general that USAF policy is not to ignore UFO reports, but to collect, evaluate, and act on the information. He establishes Project Sign (Project HT-304 under USAF Technical Instruction no. TI-2185) in a memo titled “Flying Discs.” Alfred Loedding, who is convinced that the flying discs are extraterrestrial, may have come up with the “Sign” designation. It carries a 2A restricted classification (Sparks 11; Condon 896 ; http://www.project1947.com/fig/jic.htm; IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 24). Craigie, after his retirement from the Air Force in 1955, indicates that he believes UFOs are a waste of time and only approves Project Sign because of internal USAF politics.

1953 December 30 — 9:05 p.m. Pfc Norman Viet, on guard duty at the tank park in Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, watches a blinking red light about 18 inches in diameter moving slowly over a treeline about 200 feet away. It soon drops down out of sight. Fifteen minutes later it is seen again, rising up and floating toward the tank shed.
Viet says it is completely soundless. At 10:15 p.m. it returns, also witnessed by Sgt. Francis R. Salinder, who alerts the base and a combat team searches the area. At midnight, a red light appears above the search area, spooking a guard. ; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1953-Aug-Dec.pdf , p. 75

1954 December 30 — Fifty residents of Lima, Peru, watch a flight of 5 iridescent silver UFOs for at least 5 minutes.

1966 December 30 — 8:15 p.m. A physics professor named Galloway [possibly Louie A. Galloway III] is driving through a wooded area near Haynesville, Louisiana, and sees a bright, pulsating glow, changing from orange to white, in the woods about one mile away. He estimates its visible light power output at about one megawatt. Coming back the next day, he locates traces of burns and calls the USAF and University of Colorado UFO project.

1972 December 30 — A man driving on the A4155 from Henley to High Wycombe, UK, rounds a bend and sees an object resembling a vertical cone. What seem to be fluorescent striplights run down the side, and it emits an intense, high-pitched whistle. The next thing he knows, he is driving through Marlowe in total silence with no memory of how he got there. Some 90 minutes have vanished from his memory.

1977 December 30 — Stanford astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock writes to Frosch, offering to make available physical evidence “such as films, material samples, etc.” obtained by his Study Group on Anomalous Phenomena.

1979 December 30 — After presenting his findings to the GEPAN Scientific Council, Claude Poher resigns as director. His position is not made public, but it meets with strong opposition from the media. Poher then takes a one-year leave of absence from CNES to sail around the world with his family in a boat he has built himself. Mathematician Alain Esterle replaces Poher as GEPAN director, remaining until 1983. Under his direction, GEPAN is productive, issuing a series of detailed technical notes on cases.

DECEMBER 29th

1948 December 29 — The Fourth Army sums up the UFO situation in the southwest in a statement. In December 5–28, there were 23 reports of “flares or moving lights.” All but two are in New Mexico and are an intense white or greenish-white light.

1952 December 29 — 7:48 p.m. Col. Donald J. M. Blakeslee, 27th Fighter Escort Wing, while flying near Misawa, northern Honshu, Japan, in an F-84G at 27,000 feet in altitude, observes an object like a rotating cluster of lights colored white, green, and red. Blakeslee climbs to 35,000 feet, at which point he is level with the unknown object. He attempts a pursuit, but the UFO disappears in 30 seconds. http://www.nicap.org/521229misawa_dir.htm; Sparks 187; Swords 212–213

1953 December 29 — Keyhoe has a confrontation with Delos Smith, the science editor of the United Press wire service, and a UP executive editor. Smith is preparing a three-part series debunking Keyhoe’s claims because a “certain Air Force general swears your book is a complete fraud.” Forewarned by Frank Edwards, Keyhoe counters his arguments with documentation.

1980 December 29 — 9:00 p.m. While driving through the Piney Woods of East Texas near Huffman, about 40 miles northeast of Houston, Betty J. Cash and her two passengers notice a bright light ahead. As they draw within about 130 feet, they are confronted by a fiery diamond-shaped object, emitting flames down toward the road. What happens after that is mind-boggling. Betty Cash and Vickie and Colby Landrum suffer apparent radiation illness after watching a flame-spewing UFO and mystery helicopters. Eventually, Cash and Landrum contact their US Senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, who suggest that the witnesses file a complaint with the Judge Advocate Claims office at Bergstrom Air Force Base [now Austin-Bergstrom International Airport]. In August 1981, Cash, Landrum, and Colby are interviewed at length by personnel at Bergstrom and told that they should hire a lawyer and seek financial compensation for their injuries. With attorney Peter Gersten taking on the case pro bono, the case winds its way through the US courts for several years. Cash and Landrum sue the federal government for $20 million. On August 21, 1986, US District Court Judge Ross N. Sterling dismisses their case, noting that the plaintiffs have not proved that the helicopters are associated with the government and that military officials have testified that US armed forces do not have a large, diamond-shaped aircraft in their possession. Although there is no doubt that the incident occurred, it is now considered by many to be a non-UFO case. In December 2018, Brian Dunning investigates the case and reports his findings on the Skeptoid podcast. He finds that the notes taken by Cash’s cardiologist, Vasudev B. Shenoy, attribute her hair loss to the autoimmune disease alopecia areata, that her other symptoms could be caused by illnesses that started before the incident, and that Landrum’s only documented illness is developing a cataract in one eye. He suspects that “Cash and Landrum wrongly, but honestly, placed the blame for their health problems onto whatever they saw; and even pushed the truth a bit trying to get the Air Force to pay for it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-Landrum_incident ; Good 303–305; http://www.nicap.org/801229huffman_dir.htm ; https://www.blueblurrylines.com/2013/07/resource-guide-for-cash-landrum-ufo-case.html ; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=354 ; ClearIntent 106–108; https://vdocuments.mx/mufon-ufo-journal-1986-10-october.html , pp. 12, 17;

1981 December 29–30 — William Moore meets twice with AFOSI officer Richard Doty in a restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Doty provides Moore with copies of three documents, one of which is a “fake” to test Moore. Another is the one-page Aquarius teletype. http://web.archive.org/web/20140328105832/http://www.michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/2007MUFONSymposiumNewMJ12Revelations.pdf

1987 December 29 — Lear Jet heir John Lear, based on stories by Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz, claims in a statement on ParaNet that he has independent confirmation of a secret underground base near Dulce, New Mexico, populated by gray aliens and humans. Direct communication between one alien group and the US government took place at Holloman AFB in April 1964. Lear alleges that the MJ-12 group entered into a relationship with possible ET intelligences between 1969 and 1971 and in exchange for super technology, gave carte blanche to the ETs to conduct experiments and abductions on unsuspecting human beings. Lear also claims that the ETs, with our government’s knowledge, are mutilating domestic cattle and sheep, and in some cases even
humans are the victims. In 1972–1973, a secret underground facility at Groom Lake, Nevada, was built “for and with the help of” the ETs. Lear claims that William Moore is being used as a conduit by MJ-12 (which includes Edward Teller, Henry Kissinger, Bobby Ray Inman, and possibly John Poindexter) to release information about the alien presence on earth. Many ParaNet members question his assertions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_Base ; https://strangetextsbutcher.blogspot.com/2018/08/john-lear-december-29-1987.html

2007 December 29 — 9:00 p.m. Two witnesses driving near the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale, Washington, see an object with three white lights apparently hovering above Trigger Avenue near Naval Base Kitsap to the north. As they approach its location, they see that it is large, triangular and made out of reflective metal. It is silently hovering 500 feet in the air over a farm a few yards from the highway. http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/060/S60663.html ; Nukes 504–505

2010 December 29 — The Argentinian Air Force announces that it is creating an official commission to investigate UFO reports. Capt. Moriano Mohaupt, Air Force press spokesman, says that the Commission of Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena will be composed of meteorologists, air traffic controllers, pilots, and radar experts, who will look into sightings.

DECEMBER 28th

1933 December 28 — The 4th Swedish Flying Corps begins an investigation of the ghost flyers.

1951 December 28 — Project Grudge issues Status Report #2. https://www.slideshare.net/alexpituba/projects-grudge-and-bluebook-reports-1-12-nicap

1969 December 28 — A man named Patric is driving from Midland to Windsor, Ontario, on heavily snowed roads after an accident has blocked the main highway. Suddenly, his car engine, headights, and radio fails, and he crawls to a halt in front of a star-like glow with a prismatic, multi-colored aura 100 feet ahead. Inside the glow is a domed object. A loud humming noise commences and the object shoots into the sky. The car comes back to life, but Patric inexplicably reaches Windsor one hour late.

1980 December 28 — 1:48 a.m. RAF Woodbridge Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt visits the alleged December 26 landing site with 20–30 servicemen (including John Burroughs, Sgt. Adrian Bustinza, Sgt. Bobby Ball, and Sgt. Monroe Nevels). They take radiation readings in the triangle of depressions and in the surrounding area using an AN/PDR-27, a standard US military radiation survey meter. Although they record 70–100 microR/hr at the landing site, in other regions they detect only 30–40 microR/hr, around the background level. Furthermore, they detect a similar small “burst” over half a mile away from the landing site. Halt records the events on a microcassette recorder, the “Halt tape,” released to UFO researchers in 1984 by Col. Sam Morgan, who has succeeded Ted Conrad as Halt’s superior. The tape chronicles Halt’s investigation in the forest in real time. During this investigation, a flashing light is seen across the field to the east, almost in line with a farmhouse, as the witnesses had seen on the first night. The Orfordness Lighthouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight. Later, three star-like lights are seen in the sky, two to the north and one to the south, about 10° above the horizon. The brightest of these hovers for 2–3 hours and seems to beam down a stream of light from time to time. Astronomers have explained these as merely bright stars. In June 2010, retired Col. Charles Halt signs a notarized affidavit, in which he again summarizes what happened, then states he believes the event to be extraterrestrial and covered up by both the UK and US military. Contradictions between this affidavit and the facts as recorded at the time in Halt’s memo (dated January 13, 1981) and tape recording (made December 28) have been pointed out. In 2010, base commander Col. Ted Conrad provides a statement about the incident to UFO researcher David Clarke. Conrad states that “We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt’s descriptions either in the sky or on the ground” and that “We had people in position to validate Halt’s narrative, but none of them could.” In an interview, Conrad criticizes Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying “he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and Britain both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” Conrad also disputes the testimony of Sgt. James Penniston, who claims to have touched an alien spacecraft; he had interviewed Penniston at the time and he had not mentioned any such occurrence. Conrad also suggests that the entire incident was a hoax.

1980 December 28–29 — Around 12:00 midnight. USAF A1C Larry Warren claims he is on patrol at RAF Woodbridge with other servicemen who are bringing lighting equipment to a large clearing called Capel Green. At 12:30 a.m., he is directed into the woods to “investigate a disturbance.” They soon come to a large field where about 40 military personnel are gathered. They are ordered to surround what appears to be a bright fog or mist. When his group enters the field, Warren sees it is a glowing, yellow-green, circular object not more than 12 inches in height. Two officers walk around it with Geiger counters, someone takes photos, and another operates a movie camera. He hears shouts of “Here it comes!” and sees a small red light that quickly approaches his group at 1:30 a.m. The basketball-sized object makes a downward arc and hovers at 20 feet above the ground. It then explodes in a blinding flash that gives off no heat. Instantly, about 25 away, Warren claims he sees a large, pyramid-shaped object topped by a glowing red light. Covering the entire surface are what look like boxes and pipes. An officer orders Bustinza and Warren (now feeling nauseous) to approach within 10–15 feet of the object. Before long they are ordered further back. A staff car arrives, carrying Col. Gordon Williams and his staff. From far behind the object comes a bright bluish ball of light. Warren claims he can see large-headed beings inside. He sees Col. Williams approach the beings and stare at them. Warren arrives back at Security Control at 4:30 a.m. Most ufologists find Warren’s account unreliable, and the book he coauthored, Left at East Gate, is withdrawn by the publisher, Cosimo, in 2017 after finding “inaccurate or embellished” testimony. In 2010, Jenny Randles, who first reported the Rendlesham case in the London Evening Standard in 1981 and coauthored with local researchers the first book on the case in 1984, Sky Crash: A Cosmic Conspiracy, emphasizes her previously expressed doubts that the incident was caused by extraterrestrial visitors. While suggesting that an unidentified phenomenon might have caused parts of the case, she notes: “Whilst some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances.” The most plausible skeptical explanation is that the sightings are due to a combination of several factors. The initial sighting on December 26, when the airmen saw something apparently descending into the forest, coincides with the appearance of a bright fireball over southern England; such fireballs are a common source of UFO reports. The supposed landing marks are identified by police and foresters as rabbit diggings. According to the witness statements from December 26, the flashing light seen from the forest lay in the same direction as the Orfordness Lighthouse. When the eyewitnesses attempted to approach the light, they realized it was further off than they thought. Timings on Halt’s tape recording indicate that the light he saw, which lay in the same direction as the light seen two nights earlier, flashed every five seconds, which was the flash rate of the Orfordness Lighthouse. The star-like objects that Halt reported hovering low to the north and south are thought by some skeptics to have been misinterpretations of bright stars distorted by atmospheric and optical effects. No evidence has emerged to confirm that anything came down in the forest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident ; http://www.nicap.org/801226rendlesham_dir.htm ; http://cufos.org/cases/1980_12_27-28_UK_SUFF_Rendlesham-Forest_IUR_ArticlesR.pdf ; http://www.therendleshamforestincident.com/The_Full_Report.html ; UFOFiles2, pp. 105–115; http://www.therendleshamforestincident.com/Witness_Statements.html; Nukes 403–443; http://www.therendleshamforestincident.com/Others_Involved_BZDR.html ; http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/east/series3/rendlesham_ufos.shtml ; http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham.htm ; http://ufoevidence.org/documents/doc659.htm ; http://cufos.org/cases/1980_12_27-28_UK_SUFF_Rendlesham-Forest_GreenwoodR_Redacted.pdf

1988 December 28 — 7:45 p.m. Many people in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, see a huge, bright-yellow triangular object in the sky. Mañuel Marcado watches as two F-14 Tomcats (probably from an aircraft carrier) approach the object from either side then cross in front of it. The light stops in mid-air and absorbs both planes, according to Mercado. The object moves over Lago Samán, then divides itself into two triangles, one of which shoots off to the east and the other to the north. Allegedly, the triangular objects were tracked on US Navy radars.

DECEMBER 27

1949 December 27 — USAF announces that Project Grudge is terminated. Its files are put into storage. The Grudge report is released again, reiterating that UFOs are the “result of (1) misinterpretations of various conventional objects; (2) a mild form of mass hysteria; or (3) hoaxes.”

1950 December 27 — Sunset. A TWA flight, piloted by Capt. Art Shutts, is enroute from Chicago to Kansas City. Near Bradford, Illinois, Shutts notices a bright white light ahead of the plane, also flashing red and green occasionally. It begins to “wobble and swerve unsteadily,” then streaks back and forth in a north-south line through an arc of 10–30°, changing direction abruptly. He notices that the horizon near the UFO appears to vibrate as if light is distorted, especially after the object puts on a burst of speed. It dims to a pinpoint and begins to slowly move south. Suddenly it lurches, accelerates rapidly, zooms upward at a 45° angle, makes a nearly square turn, plunges downward, and disappears below the horizon to the north. It is visible for 25 minutes.

1854 December 27 — Elizabeth Klarer, having been alerted by her sister May that the local Zulu people are reporting appearances of a mythical lightning bird in the sky, travels from Johannesburg, South Africa, with her children to a hill southwest of Rosetta, KwaZulu Natal, that she later calls Flying Saucer Hill. There she claims to see a star ship descend and hover 8 feet above the ground, emitting a soft hum. Its hull is spinning, though its central dome remains stationary. The friendly extraterrestrial Akon, with whom she has been in telepathic contact, is clearly visible through one of three portholes, but a blast of heat emanating from the ship prevents her from approaching. The UFO leaves by shooting high into the sky.

1960 December 27 — Blue Book officer Maj. Robert Friend and his boss at ATIC, Philip G. Evans, write a memo to Air Force Intelligence in the Pentagon. Friend complains about civilian UFO organizations supported by people for “financial gain, religious reasons, pure emotional outlet, ignorance, or possibly to use the organization as a ‘cold war’ tool.” He is upset by their accusations that the Air Force is withholding UFO information.

1963 December 27 — At Bank’s Stables in Epping, Essex, UK, trainee riding instructor Pauline Abbott sees a shiny white UFO on the ground. It is about 8 feet long, 3 feet high at the center, and has what looks like a window on one side that is brighter than the rest of the object. It takes off, flies horizontally for 100 feet, and disappears. Grass is found flattened over a circular area. Marks “like three large fingerprints pushed together into mud” are found, forming a square with 8-foot sides within an 11-foot circular depression that contains a 3-foot central circle. http://www.project1947.com/47cats/phillips.htm ; http://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAjournalVolume1No.1Summer1964.pdf

1977 December 27 — A White House press release states that it accepts NASA’s evaluation of the UFO situation and will not pursue its initiative any further.

1977 December 27 — 10:54 p.m. Police officers Ron Arey and Howard Dellinger are flying in a Bell Jet Ranger police helicopter at 1,100 feet in Charlotte, North Carolina, when they see two lights approaching from the northwest. They pass the chopper to the right at an estimated 200 feet. Charlotte FAA air traffic controller Ray Bader confirms two unknown targets on radar. Later on, the object circles the helicopter at an estimated distance of 200 feet. The UFO looks like a globular white light reflecting upward into a silver, parachute-like object with ribs connecting the light to it. Possibly a prank balloon.

1979 December 27 — 11:15 a.m. Two construction workers are driving south on Knott Street in Coquille, Oregon, when they see a bright flash in the southern sky. It is caused by a reflection off a thin, metallic, domed object wobbling nearby. It is about 40–50 feet in diameter and 6–7 feet thick. The object descends to about 1,000 feet. The witnesses try to drive closer and look at it through inexpensive binoculars as it flies down the valley before it disappears to the south.

1979 December 27 — Night. A car factory worker at Halewood, Merseyside, UK, is walking home when he senses something behind him. Turning around, he sees a floating white sphere, several feet in diameter, heading silently toward him. He watches it pass, and the tingling at the back of his neck intensifies. When it is about 20 feet ahead, it stops and shoots to the southwest at a 45° angle. The man’s hair remains charged with static for two days.

DECEMBER 26

1896 December 26 — Early morning. Dairy farmer Ezekiel Sergeant and a hired man have just finished milking their cows near Wilmington, Delaware, when they hear strains of music in the air. Then a bottle falls at Sergeant’s feet and breaks into pieces. He sees an enormous, fish-shaped airship with extended wings, a large tail, and a bright searchlight.
Amid the shattered glass he finds a slip of paper allegedly written by Capt. James Dashiel and Thomas Murphy on the airship Icarus that is sailing from Salt Lake City to Cuba.

1947 December 26 — At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, University of Iowa astronomer Charles C. Wylie proposes a coast-to-coast sky patrol to report on rockets, meteors, or flying saucers. He says that “mass hysteria” about saucers could have been prevented with a sky patrol in place. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1947-Revision.pdf

1951 December 26–27 — Ruppelt and Col. Sanford H. Kirkland Jr. of ATIC meet with members of the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and ask them to help out with the USAF evaluation of UFO reports: first, a study of witness perception and recall, then a statistical study of UFO reports. Clark III 929; https://www.cufon.org/cufon/stork1-7.htm

1953 December 26 — The first of a series of articles in the Washington Times-Herald by Richard Reilly questions the Air Force’s openness about UFOs.

1954 December 26 — Australian physicist O. H. “Harry” Turner has been tasked with reviewing UFO reports in the RAAF files and writing an assessment for the Australian Directorate of Air Force Intelligence. Now in England, he sends the report to the Secretary, Department of Air, in Melbourne. He writes: “If one assumes these Intelligence reports are authentic, then the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any interpretation other than that unidentified flying objects are being observed…. Indeed, the superiority is such that it is highly improbable that such objects have a terrestrial origin… the evidence presented by the reports held by the RAAF tend to support the above conclusion—namely that certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of an extra-terrestrial origin.” Turner goes on to recommend appointing at least one full-time investigator; publicity to encourage more people to report sightings; a liaison with the USAF to exchange information and verify Keyhoe’s claims; liaison with the RAF and the possibility of forming a panel to assist in analyzing reports. The Director of RAAF Intelligence checks with USAF on the reliability of Keyhoe’s work, and they ultimately reject it as impractical and unjustified. http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/kb_uasgov.htm#fab ; http://www.project1947.com/forum/bcoz1.htm ; http://www.auforn.com/NEWSLETTER-SIXTEEN.html

1968 December 26 — The Spanish Air Ministry’s press office issues a release inviting citizens to report UFO cases to the air force. A few days later, Second Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mariano Cuadra Medina issues the first regulations in Spain on how to handle UFO reports. The information is rated confidential.

1969 December 26–27 — The American Academy for the Advancement of Science holds a special two-day segment on “Unidentified Flying Objects” at its annual meeting in Boston at the Sheraton Hotel. The program is arranged by Thornton Page (NASA Manned Spacecraft Center), Philip Morrison (MIT), Walter Orr Roberts (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), and Carl Sagan (Cornell). Rising to the occasion, James E. McDonald presents an excellent critique of the Air Force and Colorado project investigations as well as an in-depth examination of the RB-47 and Lakenheath-Bentwaters cases. Donald Menzel attempts to show that all UFO sightings can be explained, even though some of his “explanations” are complex. Morrison discusses the nature of hard evidence and concludes that reliable UFO reports would stand up both in a court of law and in the rigors of science. Cornell University Press publishes the proceedings, UFOs—A Scientific Debate, in 1972. http://www.cufon.org/cufon/mcdon2.htm

1980 December 26 — 3:00 a.m. A series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, have become linked with claims of UFO landings. The events occur just outside RAF Woodbridge [now MOD Woodbridge], used at the time by the United States Air Force. USAF personnel, including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claim to experience a UFO event. A security patrol (A1C John Burroughs and S/Sgt Budd Steffens) near the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge sees lights apparently descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest. These lights are attributed by astronomers to a piece of natural debris seen burning up as a fireball over southern England at the time. The observers initially think it is a downed aircraft but, when others (S/Sgt James Penniston, Burroughs, and A1C Edward Cabansag) enter the forest to investigate they see, according to Halt’s memo, a glowing object, metallic in appearance, with colored lights. As they attempt to approach the object, it appears to move through the trees, and “the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy.” Penniston later claims he and Burroughs encountered a “craft of unknown origin” while in the forest, which he photographed and touched, although there is no publicized mention of this at the time and no corroboration from other witnesses. Shortly after 4:00 a.m., local police are called to the scene, but they report that the only lights they can see are those from the Orfordness Lighthouse, a few miles away on the coast. After daybreak, Burroughs and Penniston return to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and find three small impressions on the ground in a triangular pattern, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. At 10:30 a.m., the Suffolk Constabulary are called out again, this time to see the impressions, which they think could have been made by an animal. Georgina Bruni, in her book You Can’t Tell the People (2000), publishes a photo of the supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting.

1985 December 26 — Night. Novelist Whitley Strieber undergoes a bizarre UFO abduction in his cabin in upstate New York. After he is awakened by a peculiar noise, he opens his eyes to see a small, inhuman creature rushing toward his bed. The next thing he knows it is morning, and he is feeling disoriented and angry but can’t tell why. Later, the full story of missing time, terrifying flashbacks, and intrusive examinations by entities he calls the “visitors” unfolds under the direction of Budd Hopkins in hypnosis sessions by Donald Klein of the New York Psychiatric Institute beginning in March 1986. Strieber tells the story in his 1987 book Communion. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/03/whitley-striebers-communion-at-30/

2002 December 26 — Roswell witness Walter G. Haut signs an affidavit that asserts he had seen bodies recovered from the 1947 crash in a temporary morgue at Roswell Army Air Field. Haut dies December 15, 2005, and the affidavit is released by his family.

DECEMBER 25th

1980 December 25 — 9:00 p.m. The Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 749 re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, breaks into several pieces, and creates a spectacular fireworks display over northwest Europe. Police stations, coast guards, and the RAF receive hundreds of calls reporting four or five “comet-like objects leaving bright trails.” Astronomers also record three fireball meteors the same night, the largest and brightest appearing at 3:00 a.m.

DECEMBER 24th

1909 December 24 — 10:00 p.m. Thousands of citizens of Boston and neighboring communities see an airship with lights flying at an altitude of around 400 feet. Alex Randall of Revere reports wings, tail, and propeller, but other observers only see a cylindrical shape at most. In Providence, Rhode Island, author H. P. Lovecraft sees what people are claiming is Tillinghast’s airplane, but he identifies it as the planet Venus.

1933 December 24 — 6:00 p.m. Witnesses in Kalix, Norrbotten, Sweden, see beams of light coming from a machine that seems to be searching the ground below. The beams are “blinding.” The sighting is part of a wave of “ghost flier” reports of gray monoplanes without identifying markings that are reported over rural areas of Scandinavia from November 15, 1933, through February 11, 1934. The Swedish Military Record Office accumulates 96 reports from Sweden, 234 from Norway, and 137 from Finland, and the Swedish Air Force undertakes at least two reconnaissance missions in search of the mystery planes. More than 50% of the reports take place between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., when Venus is low over the horizon.

1949 December 24 — The January 1950 issue of True magazine is published, with Donald Keyhoe’s article, “The Flying Saucers Are Real.” Keyhoe argues that the Air Force knows UFOs are real, alien, and covering up information from the public in order to avoid panic: “For the past 175 years, the planet Earth has been under systematic close-range examination by living, intelligent observers from another planet.” The Air Force finds itself buried in letters, telegrams, and phone calls demanding information about flying saucers. http://www.nicap.org/articles/fsar.pdf

1953 December 24 — 8:04 a.m. US Navy Lts. J. B. Howard and L. D. Linhard, flying F9F-2 jet fighters, see 10 silver oval objects flying in formation at 450+ mph, straight and level, over El Cajon, California. http://www.nicap.org/531224elcajon_dir.htm

1959 December 24 — Maj. Gen. Richard E. O’Keefe, acting inspector general of the Air Force, issues instructions pertaining to “UFO business” to every air base commander in the US. The document is not intended for public distribution, but NICAP obtains a copy. Across the top are the words “UFOs Serious Business.” It says that UFOs “must be rapidly and accurately identified as serious USAF business in the ZI [Zone of Interior]” and specifies that UFO investigators “should be equipped with binoculars, camera, Geiger counter, magnifying glass and have a source for containers in which to store samples.” O’Keefe asks that UFO explanations be “reasonable and knowledgeable.” http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1959-Oct-Dec.pdf , p. 61, 65–66

1978 December 24 — 6:50 p.m. Benito Franchi, 45, is working in the power station at Pietracamela, Terama, Italy, in a room with two AC generators, one connected to power and the other disconnected, when he suddenly feels ill and faint. The working generator’s dial hands register an overload on the network, and the dial hands on the disconnected generator are also waving. This continues for about one minute, leaving the dials badly out of calibration. Franchi feels paralyzed and falls to the ground. Suddenly everything stops, and out of the window he sees three or four bright flashes coming from a ball of brilliant red light that hurts his eyes. The object takes off and disappears to the southwest. Franchi suffers from severe conjunctivitis, and the generator dials must be calibrated again. Shortly afterward, a large luminous UFO is seen hovering above the Gran Sasso massif to the southwest.

1989 December 24 or 25 — 3:00 p.m. Pilot Vladimir Kuzmin sees a dark gray, cigar-shaped object hovering southwest of Chelyabinsk, Russia, while he is flying a two-seat Aero L-29 Delfin. He estimates its altitude at 4.6 miles. The sighting lasts more than 8 minutes with the object in direct view for over 4 minutes. Within hours, Kuzmin experiences a strange, crust like skin rash on the exposed portion of his face that lasts for more than 11 days.

1992 December 24 — 6:09–8:15 p.m. Twenty civilian witnesses and police south and west of Monroe, Louisiana, watch a silent, boomerang-shaped UFO with bright beams of light pass over cars in a forested area and bounce up and down for 6 minutes. The object is videotaped by one of the witnesses, Cecil Cullipher, in West Monroe.

DECEMBER 23rd

1946 December 23 — Jacobsson’s ghost rocket committee issues its final report on 987 ghost rocket cases, stating that 225 reports had been made in full daylight. More than 100 reports describe spool-shaped objects with or without wings. It concludes: “Despite the extensive effort, which has been carried out with the means available, and seven months after the first observations, no actual proof that a test of rocket projectiles has taken place over Sweden has been found.”

1953 December 23 — USAF Intelligence Col. George E. Perry writes to Gen. Woodbury M. Burgess, ADC Deputy for Intelligence at Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center], recommending that when the 4602nd investigates a UFO sighting and it is not a conventional object, personnel should state “The information on this sighting will be analyzed by the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Dayton, Ohio,” and leave it at that. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia20.htm

1985 December 23 — 3:10 a.m. The merchant ferry Manuel Soto, owned by Transmediterránea Company, is sailing from Las Palmas to Arrecife in the Canary Islands when the third officer on duty sees a light on the horizon ahead. Initially he identifies it as the star Antares but soon realizes the position is wrong. He takes measurements of its height and azimuth. It remains in the same spot for 15 minutes, after which it begins moving quickly. Other crew members see the light approaching the ship and reaching the zenith 2 minutes later. The object’s outline does not resemble an airplane or helicopter, and it has an intense white light at its center, a weaker red light near it, and another soft light set apart. The object is flying low and silently.

DECEMBER 22nd

1909 December 22 — 6:30 p.m. Many residents of Worcester, Massachusetts, see a “brilliant ray” emitted by a large black object 1,000 feet high in the southwestern sky. After circling over the town, the object heads to the west, where it is seen over Marlboro. It returns to Worcester between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., flying at low altitude and sporting a searchlight. One policeman thinks he sees enormous wings; others detect one or two figures inside. The airship is attributed to a Worcester businessman named Wallace E. Tillinghast, who has told the Boston Herald on December 12 that he has invented a heavier-than-air monoplane and has made more than 100 test flights at night to Boston and New York City. But Tillinghast never offers his aircraft for public viewing, and people gradually realize it is a hoax.

1941 December 22 —Electrical engineer George Bogner stops his car at the corner of St. Agnes Avenue and Pleasant Street in Utica, New York, to watch a round, metallic object speed silently across the sky. He estimates it at 100 feet in diameter and moving at 300 mph.

1952 December 22 — Ruppelt finds out that the CIA Robertson Panel is back on again after being postponed on December 12. Apparently under pressure from the Air Force, which is setting a trap to embarrass the CIA with sensational IFO cases dressed up as “best” unknown UFO cases, CIA Director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith reverses the decision to postpone the panel meeting till March 1953 or later. Smith orders the Robertson Panel to be carried out immediately. A rush-to-judgment panel will have no time to reflect on the USAF trickery involved in the IFOs-as-UFOs deception and will just react in dismissive scepticism that there is no scientific evidence for UFO reality, and hence no reason for the CIA to intrude into USAF jurisdiction over air intelligence matters such as unidentified aerial threats (UFOs). Ruppelt calls ADC to say that he will not be able to conduct the ADC UFO briefing tour as previously scheduled due to the CIA meeting now tentatively set in early January 1953 (he confirms the call by teletype December 23). https://sohp.us/Sign-Historical-Group-Workshop-Proceedings.pdf , p. 48

1952 December 22 — 7:30 p.m. An instrument technician driving toward Larson AFB [now Grant County International Airport] near Moses Lake, Washington, stops his car to watch a hat-shaped glowing object rising vertically in odd spurts right and left, then level off at high speed. The object glows white with a red side when it is rotated.
Halfway through a roll the light disappears, then it holds stationary in the sky with jumpy movements. Duration is about 15 minutes. http://www.nicap.org/521222larson_dir.htm

1962 December 22 — About 3:00 a.m. At Ezeiza International Airport [now Ministro Pistarini International Airport] at Ezeiza Partido in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, tower operators Horacio Alora and Mario Pezzutto are watching an Aereolíneas Argentinas plane that is about to take off. It is also seen by an approaching DC-8 jet operated by Panagra, whose captain asks what the object is at the end of the runway. Alora sees a large, round, glowing object that has evidently descended when he is watching the airliner. The UFO immediately rises about 30 feet, hovers, then accelerates on a northeast course.

DECEMBER 21st

1876 December 21 — 8:30–8:45 p.m. A bright bolide that explodes and breaks up into a group of 20–100 smaller balls is seen over a wide swath of the US from Topeka, Kansas, to western Pennsylvania. Over Columbus, Ohio, it is described as “a cluster or flock of meteors seemingly huddled together, like a flock of wild geese, and moving with the same velocity and grace of regularity. The color of their light was a yellowish red, like red rocket-balls.” A stony chondrite falls 3 miles northwest of Rochester, Indiana, at the same time.

1952 December 21 — Lyman Streeter and five other witnesses observe a large, cigar-shaped object over Winslow, Arizona.

1957 December 21 — 6:30 p.m. Yvonne Torres de Mendonça, her three small children, and a servant are traveling in a jeep driven by her mechanic, Marcio Gonçalves, towards Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, along the Paraguayan border. They see a large ball of light about the size of the full moon that starts moving toward them, and they realize that it is two lights flying silently side by side. The lights straddle the road, oscillating from one side to the other in a strange wobbling motion and spinning on their axes. One of them stops in mid-air and dives toward the ground in a falling-leaf motion 60 feet ahead of them, while the other maneuvers in circles around the jeep. The lights are spherical and encircled by a Saturn-like ring at the center. The upper hemisphere and rim are fiery red, while the lower hemisphere is silvery white. The two objects follow the jeep for 2 hours, all the way to town, maneuvering intelligently around them, especially when the jeep stops twice to evaluate the objects. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1957-Dec.pdf , pp. 60–63

1958 December 21 — A group of more than 50 commercial airline pilots, all of whom have had at least one UFO sighting, tell reporter John Lester with the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger that the Air Force policy of censorship and denial regarding reports is the “Big Brother attitude carried to the ultimate extreme.” Most express disgust with the USAF methods of interrogating civilian pilots and complain about the gag order about publicly talking about their sightings under penalty of 10 years in prison or $10,000 in fines (JANAP 146). “Nuts to that. Who needs it?” https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1958-Nov-Dec.pdf , p. 55

1962 December 21 — Ali R. Diaz is aboard a DC-3 tourist plane on a vacation trip to Angel Falls, Venezuela. He obtains color film of a UFO rising from the base of a mountain. The film shows a yellowish teardrop-shaped object rising across the face of Auyán-tepui plateau. The UFO seems to oscillate from side to side until it is lost in clouds. The falls and mountain provide location points throughout.

1964 December 21 — 4:50 p.m. Kenneth Norton Jr., 14, is looking out his bedroom window in Staunton, Virginia, when he sees a “fast-moving object without wings or tail structure.” He describes it as cigar-shaped and about 125 feet in diameter, in view for 5 seconds.

1964 December 21 — 5:00 p.m. Driving east on US Highway 250, Horace Burns is approaching Fishersville, Virginia, when an enormous object appears from the north and descends slowly in a gradual slant. Just before it crosses the highway 200 feet in front of him, the UFO narrowly misses power lines. It is so huge that when it passes nearly in front of him, it fills his entire windshield. The UFO comes down gently and lands in a field to Burns’ right. Meanwhile, Burns’ car engine has shut off. The object appears to be at least 125 feet in diameter and 80–90 feet high. After 60–90 seconds, it rises up several hundred feet, makes a sound like rushing air, and shoots off to the northeast, vanishing from sight. A high level of radioactivity is detected at the site December 30 by investigators German professor Ernest G. Gehman and engineer Harry M. Cook. They obtain a Geiger counter reading of 16–18 milliR/hr. Two Blue Book investigators—T/Sgt. David N. Moody and S/Sgt. Harold T. Jones—visit the site with Gehman on January 12 and take further readings (1.5 milliR/hr on Burns’ left rear car door). They dispute Gehman’s earlier results, but a possible 11x–12x drop in radiation level in 13 days possibly indicates a radionuclide with a 3–4 day half-life. http://www.nicap.org/641221harrisonburg_dir.htm

1978 December 21 — 12:30 a.m. Capt. John B. Randle is flying an Argosy cargo plane from Blenheim to Christchurch, New Zealand, when he notices white lights in the sky above the mouth of the Clarence River at Waipapa Bay. He contacts Wellington Air Traffic Control, which confirms that it has five oscillating objects on its scopes. The lights are also seen on the ground.

1978 December 21 — 3:30 a.m. Wellington Air Traffic Control contacts Capt. Vern Powell, pilot of a freight aircraft about to make the Blenheim to Christchurch run, alerting him to the position of the objects, which have stayed in position. He ascends to 7,500 feet and sees one white light, tinged with red, through the clouds. It follows Powell’s plane, and Wellington radar tracks it for 12 miles before it disappears. As they near Christchurch Airport, Powell and his copilot Ian Pirie notice a return on their onboard radar. By the next sweep it has moved one mile closer, moving at about 8,000 mph. They cannot confirm anything visually, but the radar indicates the object has streaked off to the left and disappears. Then Powell and Pirie see a flashing light in front of them.

1981 December 21 — Capt. O. Celen and other people in Aksaray, Turkey, see a huge, glittering, silent, egg-shaped object shedding a greenish light over the building site of the Aksaray Engine Factory. It is hovering at 800–1,000 feet and shoots away to the southwest.

1989 December 21 — Belgian Minister of Defense Jean-Pol Poncelet states that there have been many UFOs reported and that the ministry and the Army have no idea what they are.

DECEMBER 20th

1948 December 20 — Sneider sends his summary of the Chiles-Whitted case, Air Intelligence Report number 102-122-79, to Cabell. It is later called “The Ghost of the Estimate” by some researchers. https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sign/sign.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/docs/480724montgomery_docs.pdf

1948 December 20 — In a confidential memo to Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, LaPaz argues that the green fireball he saw on December 12 was no meteor he has ever studied. He writes that the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor and left no “trail of sparks or dust cloud” as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes. Other anomalous characteristics were the intense lime-green color, low altitude of only 8–10 miles yet exhibiting no sound, flat rather than arced trajectory, and turning on and off like a light switch. The interest in green fireballs inspires the creation of an informal group, the Los Alamos Astrophysical Association, whose members, all scientists and engineers with security clearances, are permitted to examine some classified Project Sign reports. This is essentially the beginning of Project Twinkle. https://worldhistoryproject.org/1948/12/20/project-twinkle-established-to-monitor-green-fireball-sightings

1948 December 20 — 8:54 p.m. Shortly after they have packed up their Speed Graphic cameras provided by LaPaz to try to photograph the green fireballs, personnel (William D. Wilson, Buford G. Truett, Clifford E. Strang, and George S. Skipper) at an Atomic Energy Security Service post west of Los Alamos, New Mexico, spot a blue-white fireball
moving in a nearly flat trajectory. Two objects separate from the main body and trail behind it. Thanks to an independent observation at another site, LaPaz is able to triangulate its flight path as 7–8 miles, west to east toward Los Alamos. http://www.nicap.org/alamos481220dir.htm

1949 December 20 — Following consideration by the Defense Department’s Research and Development Board, Joseph Kaplan’s green fireball project is approved. http://www.nicap.org/docs/491209_Light_Phenomena.pdf

1954 December 20–21 — A group of Dorothy Martin’s followers has gathered at her Oak Park, Illinois, home to await the midnight arrival of a flying saucer that is to rescue them from planetary disaster. They have left jobs, college, and spouses, and given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure. When no spaceman arrives, the group sits in stunned silence. Martin begins to cry, and at 4:45 a.m. she receives a message by automatic writing saying that the God of Earth has decided to spare the planet from destruction. The cataclysm has been called off: “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” The group begins an urgent campaign to spread its message to a broader audience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

1958 December 20 — 2:55 a.m. Hans Gustafsson, a 24-year-old truck driver, and Stig Rydberg, a 30-year-old student, claim that while driving home to Helsingborg, Sweden, from a dance they see a strange light in a glade on their right near Domsten. They leave the car and walk up to the object, which turns out to be a disc-shaped vehicle 16 feet in diameter resting on 3 legs. The two are suddenly attacked by four gray creatures about 4 feet tall who try to drag them to the UFO. In January 1959, a medical doctor, Lars-Erik Essén, hypnotizes the men in what is perhaps the first use of hypnosis of a UFO witness, but the two manage to fool Essén. In the late 1980s, Gustafsson’s brother Artur reveals to ufologist Clas Svahn that before he died his brother had told him the story was a hoax. https://www.cryptopia.us/site/2018/05/terrible-flying-jelly-bags-sweden

1971 December 20 — Prior to the launch of a Black Arrow rocket, an unidentified aircraft is seen by a trained meteorological observer over prohibited airspace at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in South Australia. The RAAF explains it as re-entering space debris, although it is impossible to confirm.

1973 December 20 — 2:15 a.m. Michael Wagner and Robert B. Klinn of Pacific Palisades, California, see a yellow, glowing blob hovering in the south-southeast. Through a telescope, the blob is seen to be a precise arrangement of round, yellow-gold lights. It fades away after 75 minutes.

1978 December 20 — US Rep. Samuel S. Stratton (D-N.Y.) expresses concern to his Armed Services Investigations Subcommittee about the “alleged ability of unknown aircraft to penetrate airspace and over above SAC bases, their weapons storage areas, missile sites, and launch control facilities, and the inability of Air Force equipment and personnel to intercept and identify such aircraft.” Stratton sends a letter to USAF Maj. Gen. Charles C. Blanton requesting incident reports.

1981 December 20 — 7:00 p.m. Journalists Nils Kåre Nesvold and Per Holden see a shiny, spherical object at Vongraven, Norway, the apparent size of a large star. It is steady and intense with no halo. It is flying nearly 3 miles distant and about 3,300–6,500 feet above a mountain. Its speed is irregular, and it changes both course and altitude. Suddenly it disappears as though it is switched off.

DECEMBER 19th

1951 December 19 — Ruppelt travels to the Pentagon with ATIC Chief Col. Frank Dunn. They visit with Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, who has replaced Cabell as USAF director of intelligence and who seems “familiar with the general aspects of the problem.” Samford’s aide, Gen. William M. Garland, tells them that ATIC has the sole authorization to carry out UFO investigations for the entire US military (not exactly true), and they discuss security problems posed by UFOs at sensitive installations. Ruppelt reveals that his preliminary analysis of UFO sighting patterns has uncovered a disturbing correlation of unexplained sightings around nuclear weapons facilities and highly classified nuclear stockpile sites and some SAC strategic air bases. Gen. Samford orders ATIC to conduct an exhaustive statistical study to verify Ruppelt’s findings, using the newly established ATIC Project WHITE STORK contract with the research think tank Battelle Memorial Institute (which eventually spends $100,000 on the study, Subproject PPS-100, which does confirm Ruppelt’s pattern).

1954 December 19 — 11:00 p.m. José Parra, an 18-year-old jockey, watches a disc-shaped UFO land in Valencia, Venezuela. Six 3-foot-tall humanoids disembark and set about collecting vegetation samples and loading stones into the disc. When he tries to approach them, he is paralyzed by a violet beam aimed at him by one of the creatures. All the short beings enter the craft and it takes off. The UFO leaves behind ground traces. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1954-12-19-venezuela-valencia.htm

1958 December 19 —John Lester, a writer for the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, has polled 1,000 US government radar operators over the past month and found that 80% have observed UFOs traveling at fantastic speeds, executing perfect 90° turns, steep vertical climbs, and hovering stops. They fly in formation and manage to stay just ahead of USAF jets scrambled to intercept them. Tacker responds immediately that the UFOs are natural phenomena (“lightning, meteors, and meteorites”).

1964 December 19 — 3:50 p.m. Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland tracks two large targets on radar moving at 6,900 mph.

2017 December 19 — Luis Elizondo states on CNN that he believes there is “very compelling evidence we may not be alone.” https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/18/politics/luis-elizondo-ufo-pentagon/index.html

2018 December 19–21 — Sightings of drones disrupt around 1,000 flights at Gatwick Airport in Sussex, UK, causing flights to be diverted or cancelled. There are multiple reports but no physical or photographic evidence. The military are called in with special anti-drone equipment. Gatwick goes back to normal operations on December 21 after two people are arrested then released without charge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident

DECEMBER 18th

1947 December 18 — Pentagon Col. James F. Olive Jr. (chief of AFOAI) and Lieut. Col. J. E. Thomas of the Offensive Air section (AFOAI-OA) respond to a request by deputy chief of Air Staff for Research and Development Gen. Curtis LeMay on the status of flying disc analysis. They complete their reanalysis of the earlier documents from the Pentagon and Wright-Patterson, rewrite a new EEI indicating a potentially serious but puzzling phenomenon, and turn this over to Chief of Air Force Intelligence McDonald for his signature. https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sign/sign.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/docs/471218.pdf

1954 December 18 — The New York Times reports on the Air Force’s Blue Book UFO investigations: “The sightings range from sober reports of real flying objects that prove to be something else besides saucers—mostly weather balloons—to fantastically weird stories, some of them obviously from troubled minds.”

1957 December 18 — Luis E. Corrales of Caracas, Venezuela, finds an odd luminous streak on a photographic plate recording the passage of Sputnik 2. It is a luminous trail running parallel to the satellite’s trail, then veering away. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1957-Dec.pdf , p. 57

1962 December 18 — 2:20 p.m. Night watchman Francesco Rizzi is reporting for work at a mill on Via Santa Valeria in Milan, Italy. In the center of the mill’s courtyard he hears a swishing sound and turns to see a domed metallic disc 12–15 feet in diameter with portholes hovering 3 feet above the ground. A door opens at the bottom and a small man just over 3 feet tall and wearing a luminous overall emerges. The man motions Rizzi to come nearer, but he is frozen with fear. Another small man comes out of the disc, but they both return, the door closes behind them, and the object takes off in a cloud of white smoke. Rizzi reports the sighting to a colleague, the police, and the press, and soon loses his job.

1969 December 18 — Condon is quoted in the New York Times that his investigation “was a bunch of damn nonsense,” and he is sorry he “got involved in such foolishness.”

1974 December 18 — 7:00 p.m. Executive Engineer Mohammad Riaz and others see a circular light appear above the V-shaped mountain overlooking the approach to Pattan, Pakistan, for about 25 minutes. It is also seen in Chitral, Pakistan. An earthquake (Hunza Earthquake) centers on the area on December 28, so this could be a type of earthquake light. http://s7datanet.wikidot.com/balls-of-fire-memo

1976 December 18 — 12:55 a.m. On Wood Canyon Road east of Soda Springs, Idaho, police officer Dennis Abrams has a close encounter with a 30-foot diameter, oval-shaped UFO. It lacks any seams or windows and has the bulk of three to four cars. It emits a light green light and hovers only 60 feet away. It makes no sound when hovering but makes a whistling “wind” sound when in motion.

1988 December 18 — Milton William Cooper surfaces on CompuServe online network, claiming that while working as a quartermaster with an intelligence team for Adm. Bernard A. Clarey, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, he had seen two documents, Project Grudge Special Report 13 and an MJ-12 briefing. He elaborates on Moore’s and Lear’s tales of crashes and alien bodies, adding that the aliens are called Alien Life Forms (ALFs) and that he has seen photos of aliens that supposedly landed at Holloman AFB in 1964 or 1977.

2013 December 18 — 3:00 p.m. Another Super Hornet pilot from VFA-143 encounters a white object visually and on radar in the W-72 warning zone. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33371/here-are-the-detailed-ufo-incident-reports-from-navy-pilots-flying-off-the-east-coast

DECEMBER 17th

1916 December 17 — On the Western front, Canadian soldier Maurice Philipp Tuteur and two sergeant majors watch a Zeppelin-like object rise into the clouds in the rear of their lines. It darts ahead at an estimated speed of 200 mph, turns around, darts backward, and shoots up and disappears.

1953 December 17 — After the crew of a Swedish airliner reports a wingless circular UFO over Hässleholm, Sweden, the Swedish Armed Forces orders a full-scale investigation. Capt. Ulf Christiernsson says the object is an “entirely unorthodox, metallic, symmetrical, and circular object.” Later reports claim it is a radiosonde balloon.

1953 December 17 — A memo from Todos M. Odarenko, chief of the CIA/OSI physics and electronics division, condescendingly reviews the status of various government UFO efforts.https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005515979.pdf, p. 75)

1956 December 17 — 4:20 p.m. Near Itazuke Air Base [now Fukuoka Airport] in Fukuoka, Japan, a USAF pilot flying an F-86D interceptor picks up a large blip on airborne radar. The pilot sees a tan object, round on top, at 9.2 miles and closes to within 5.7 miles. The object starts to pull away from the fighter and at 13.8 miles all radar disappears. The pilot estimates its speed as 1,700–2,000 mph. Both the pilot and his wingman report interference resembling ECM (radar jamming). http://www.nicap.org/561217itazuke_dir.htm

1956 December 17 — Night. Marie Carow goes outside her home in Conashaugh, Pennsylvania, with a flashlight and discovers two little men, 3.5 and 3 feet tall, standing motionless in her back lawn. Both wear helmets and snug-fitting suits of silvery material. Carow shines the light on them for 3 minutes, then runs back to tell her husband. 15 minutes later, they are gone. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1956-12-17-usa-conashaugh.htm

1957 December 17 — Skandinavisk UFO Information is founded in Denmark by Hans-Christian Petersen under the name Sydjysk UFO Information. It publishes the journal UFO-Nyt from 1958 to 2010.

1966 December 17 — Hynek’s article “Are Flying Saucers Real?” appears in the Saturday Evening Post, stating that hundreds of puzzling UFO cases exist and urging a serious inquiry. http://www.nicap.org/articles/SatEvePost-661217.htm

1969 December 17 — Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans announces the termination of Project Blue Book, based on the Condon report, the NAS endorsement, and “past UFO studies.” He repeats the Bolender wording that Blue Book “cannot be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” Technically, Blue Book does not terminate until January 30, 1970. Blue Book records are moved to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, in a building that requires security clearance to enter. Eventually, the files, minus the witness names, are consigned to the Modern Military Branch, Military Archives Division, National Archives, Washington, D.C. http://www.nicap.org/waves/1969BB_Termination.htm

1977 December 17 — 3:34 a.m. Radar facilities in Colorado and South Dakota track two UFOs that give strong returns, moving at more than 1,000 mph. They are tracked for the next 30 minutes, during which time one of the objects makes a close head-on pass at an aircraft. A third radar station is unable to function while the unknowns are in the area. One of the other facilities is put out of operation when the main shaft holding the radar antenna is severely bent by an unknown force.

DECEMBER 16th

1742 December 16 — 8:40 p.m. Physician Cromwell Mortimer, secretary of the Royal Society, is walking through St. James’s Park in Westminster, London, UK, when he sees a light ascend from behind the trees and houses in the southwest. When it reaches 20° against the sky, it takes a horizontal path with an undulating motion before disappearing in the northeast after a full 30 seconds. The front part is luminous with a frame-like structure behind it, and it has a faint trail.

1947 December 16 — Army Lt. Col. Harry H. Pretty in Berlin writes a memo to the Deputy Director of Intelligence in Berlin stating that the Horten brothers (Reimer and Walter) have been located in Göttingen. He says they are eccentric and quarrelsome. Though they were responsible for the Horten Ho 299 (a prototype fighter/bomber flying wing design), his investigation concludes that no saucer design “ever existed nor was projected by any of the German air research institutions.” http://www.project1947.com/fig/horten1.htm

1948 December 16 — Astronomer J. Allen Hynek is officially tasked by Project Sign with studying UFO cases for astronomical explanations.

1948 December 16 — Brig. Gen. Donald Putt, Director of USAF Research and Development, orders that the code word Sign be changed to Grudge (since the AF bears a grudge against UFO reports, according to Ruppelt), effective in February. Morale plummets. http://www.project1947.com/fig/jic.htm

1952 December 16 — Chadwell tells CIA Acting Deputy Director for Intelligence Robert Amory Jr. that he is unimpressed with the three Blue Book cases, especially since Presque Isle was identified as the planet Jupiter.

1953 December 16 — The British Air Ministry sends orders to all RAF stations saying that UFO reports are to be classified “Restricted” and personnel must not communicate any sighting information to unauthorized persons. Reports mut be sent to the air intelligence branch DDI (Tech) that is now responsible for UFO investigations.

1953 December 16 — 4:58 p.m. Lockheed Skunk Works chief Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson and his wife Althea (near Agoura, California) and a Lockheed crew (Rudy Thoren, Roy Wimmer, and 3 others) flying the WV-2 Warning Star aircraft near Long Beach, California, independently of each other observe a black flying-wing (or ellipse or crescent-shaped) object about 170–230 feet wide flying at about 15,000 ±2,000 feet altitude to the west, hovering about 30–60 miles away. At 5:04 p.m., after four minutes (to the Johnsons) six minutes (to WV-2 crew) the UFO suddenly takes off in a shallow climb accelerating to approximately earth escape velocity (25,000 mph) to the west over the Pacific. It disappears in 10–13 seconds (to WV-2 crew) or in 90 seconds (to Johnson using 8x binoculars) after reaching 90+ miles altitude. http://www.nicap.org/531216agoura_dir.htm

1954 December 16 — Jésus Paz, Luis Mejia, and another young man are driving home after dinner at a restaurant in San Carlos, Venezuela, when Paz stops to relieve himself in a park. He claims he is jumped by a hairy dwarf from a flying disc (both of which his friends see when he screams). His friends rush the unconscious Paz to a hospital. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf

1957 December 16 — Between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. Mary M. Starr, a resident of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and a former teacher with a master’s degree from Yale, is awakened by a bright light in her room. A cigar-shaped object, brightly lit and with square portholes, hovers just above her clothesline. She can see men inside. The object is approximately 20–30 feet long and dark gray or black in color, hovering motionless about 5 feet above the ground. Through its lighted windows Starr sees two figures that pass each other, walking in opposite directions. https://www.ufocasebook.com/oldsaybrookconnecticut1957.html

1967 December 16 — Philip Klass, who has heard of McDonald’s UFO activity in Australia from Low, starts a letter-writing campaign directed at the Office of Naval Research, wanting to know who approved his funding and whether they are funding his forthcoming trip to Europe and the USSR. His campaign continues for the next 18 months, bluntly attacking McDonald’s integrity and calling him a habitual liar.

1978 December 16 — 12:00 noon. Two Chilean F-5 aircraft piloted by Capts. Hernán Gabrielli Rojas and Danilo Catalán Farias are on a training mission near Mejillones, Chile. Both pilots see a radar target that gives a return equal to 10 aircraft carriers. Ground radar at Cerro Moreno airport [now Andrés Sabella Gálvez International Airport] in Antofagasta picks up the object and confirms its large size. The pilots continue to fly south between 30,000–35,000 feet. At a distance of 20 miles, they see an object “like a plantain banana” swathed in smoke. They approach it cautiously with their gun cameras on, but the UFO disappears at a huge speed to the west, heading toward Easter Island, vanishing from all three radar screens. Duration is 5 minutes. https://www.caelestia.be/darkblob19.html

1978 December 16 — 8:00 p.m. Radar detects a UFO at 10,000 feet in the region around Calama, Chile. Three F-5Es are sent from Antofagasta to intercept it and they see a large triangular object some 50 times the size of their planes. https://web.archive.org/web/20170213073219/; https://www.cohenufo.org/BPrattSelectTriCases.html

2017 December 16 — The US Department of Defense confirms the existence of a defense program used to collect data on military UFO sightings, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that was disbanded in 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html

DECEMBER 15th

1547 December 15 — Mariners in the port of Hamburg, Germany, see a fireball moving to the south. Its rays are so hot that passengers cannot remain inside the ships. Thinking the vessels are about to burn, they hide and take cover.

1914 December 15 — 4:10 p.m. The crew of a Hull trawler, the SS Ape, is streaming toward Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, when they see a “black object astern” which gradually approaches them. It turns and heads for the Lincolnshire coast where it vanishes in the fog.

1952 December 15 — 7:15 p.m. Two Air Force pilots get a momentary lock on a strange object above Goose Bay, Labrador. A T-33 and an F-94B (piloted by Capt. E. T. Johnson and Radar Observer Lt. H. S. Norris) see a bright red and white light. http://www.nicap.org/521215goose_dir.htm

1953 December 15 — 2:37 p.m. While flying a Transair Sweden DC-3 in the vicinity of Hässleholm, Skåne, Sweden, pilot Ulf Christiernsson and flight mechanic Olle Johansson encounter an “unorthodox, metallic, symmetric, round object” closing in on their aircraft for about 10 seconds. It passes about 1,970 feet under the DC-3 at an altitude of 7,055 feet. Air Force Gen. Bengt Nordenskiöld calls in reports from all relevant Swedish radar stations to identify the object, and the Defence Research Institute spends many hours reconstructing the event. However, the owner of a local perfume company confessed in late December to releasing 300 hydrogen-filled balloons south of Hässleholm as an advertising promotion around 12:30 p.m. that day.

1954 December 15 — Asked about UFOs at a press conference, Eisenhower says that it is “completely inaccurate to believe that they came from any outside planet or other place.” http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf , p. 62 Immediately after the press conference, Eisenhower asks for a full briefing on UFOs.

1956 December 15 — 11:00 a.m. While out gathering Christmas greens near Derry, New Hampshire, A. G. Horne looks up and sees a 2-foot tall green dwarf with a high-domed head, floppy ears, a face like a bloodhound, and lidless eyes like a snake. His skin hangs in folds like an elephant’s. After a few minutes, the being “started for me with a kind of screeching sound,” and Horne flees. http://www.cufos.org/HUMCAT/HUMCAT_Index_1956.pdf

1958 December 15 — 1:00–2:00 a.m. Three young men see a huge light in the sky at Almind, Denmark. It is oval-shaped, emits red or orange rays, and appears to be descending. They watch it for 18–19 minutes as it hovers at a 10° angle and quivers. Suddenly it becomes still and from its center emerge two small objects that drift away in a northerly direction and soon disappear. The large object lies on its side and quivers some more. Later it ascends and a fan-shaped tail of light spreads after it. The UFO is seen later along the coast and photographed.

1967 December 15 — The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, collapses under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge

1973 December 15 — A single crop circle is found in a wheat field at Wokuma, South Australia. The wheat has been flattened counterclockwise and there are two bare patches. https://oldcropcircles.weebly.com/australia-1973-wokurna.html

1975 December 15 — Jacques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek publish The Edge of Reality, which discusses how the extraterrestrial hypothesis does not seem to explain UFOs fully. Although they acknowledge the UFO phenomenon is real, its reality skirts the edges of accepted science, and they both lean toward an interdimensional hypothesis.

1980 December 15 — 3:00 p.m. About 40 witnesses at the Orpington Hospital redevelopment site in London, England, watch a UFO that alternately hovers, moves slowly, shoots across the sky, and finally divides into three and disappears straight up at 4:15 p.m. The object is an elongated triangular shape with a reddish-orange nose, silvery body, and diamond-blue rear section, with its nose pointing southeast. Peter McSherry, clerk of works for Lovell (Southern) Ltd. Estimates its height at 50,000 feet. A video of the object is taken in the presence of other witnesses at Seal Chart near Sevenoaks, Kent, and although it shows only a point of light in a cloudless sky, it does corroborate the sighting.

1981 December 15 — After sunset. Ali Ozel sees an extremely bright light hovering at a distance of 650–980 feet above his car in Aksaray, central Anatolia, Turkey. It performs some maneuvers and disappears to the southwest.

DECEMBER 14th

1943 December 14 — Night. British 255 Night Fighter Squadron leader Patrick Hardy Vesey Wells is flying his Bristol Beaufighter on a patrol mission around Naples, Italy, when he and his navigator notice a small bright light behind them. It stays on their tail, moving from side to side. After 1–2 minutes it goes off in another direction.

1944 December 14–28 — Numerous balls of light are reported by the Night Fighter Squadrons during bombing raids over Germany. Pilot and operations officer Charlie Horne of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron suggests calling the objects “foo fighters,” a name gleaned from the men’s favourite comic strip, “Smokey Stover” by cartoonist Bill Holman. The comic follows the escapades of a madcap fire fighter who calls his fire truck the “Foomobile.” Smokey Stover often states, “where there’s foo, there’s fire.” https://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/foofightersofworldwariipartone.html

1954 December 14 — 11:00 a.m. Three bright lights appear in the sky above Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Around 12:00 noon, they descend to a lower altitude, and witnesses see they are metallic discs. The Brazilian Air Force scrambles some jets, but they fail to intercept any of the objects. By 1:00 p.m., several groups of witnesses around the city are watching when two of the objects take off to the south, while the third comes closer and approaches some buildings in the city center. Chief of Police Col. Carlos Assunção sees a “reddish and slightly bluish object” moving at incredible speed. Maxim Cicaida, a professional photographer for Foto Heisler, snaps a photo of the disc above a building. He sends the negatives to the Brazilian Naval School in Rio de Janeiro, but they are never returned, and no analysis is released.

1960 December 14 — The Brookings Research Institute in Washington releases a 186-page report prepared for NASA titled Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs. It is later published as a 272-page Committee Print for the House Committee on Science and Astronautics on March 24, 1961. The report includes a section on “Implications of a Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life” . It is sent to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics for approval by Rep. Overton Brooks (D-La.) and discusses the effects of meeting extraterrestrial life: “It is possible that if the intelligence of these creatures were sufficiently superior to ours, they would choose to have little if any contact with us” . It also speculates on the possibility of finding alien artifacts on earth and the possibility that contact might result in social disintegration. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19640053196.pdf

1963 December 14 — The Hills have an initial meeting with Benjamin Simon, a well-known Boston hypnotist recommended to them by Dr. Stephens. It is clear to Simon that the Hills believe they have seen a UFO, but which may have been an experimental aircraft. This has set in motion an anxiety-provoking psychological experience whose sources it might be possible to uncover through hypnosis.

1975 December 14 — Late evening. A man is driving his truck on a gravel road along Toppenish Ridge in the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State when he sees a cow and two calves running toward him as if fleeing from something. Moments later he sees three figures in the ditch. One jumps up on the road, covering 15 feet in a single slow-motion leap, its arms above its head. The witness describes it as a skinny, 7-foot-tall man with a narrow, pale face and long, pointed nose. It is dressed in close-fitting black clothing and boots. On its chest there is a white trapezoid insignia. The entity is carrying something purple it its left hand that has a wire on it that runs down its arm. The other two creatures remain on the side of the road. The witness speeds up, swerving around the figure. A few moments later, a bright, elongated UFO appears behind him. The interior of the truck is flooded with light. Suddenly he becomes aware of a “shadow” in the passenger seat. From the shape of the head and coat, the man “knows” it is a friend of his. The friend looks at him, leans forward and looks up at the light, falls back, wipes his eyes, and vanishes. At that moment, the light disappears. The next morning, he learns that his friend has been killed in a shooting.

1976 December 14 — 2:00 a.m. Panoramic radar at an air force base at Contrexéville, Vosges, France, picks up unknown targets at 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 3:30 a.m. Seven air traffic controllers are the witnesses. The radar paints the targets as 10–15 miles apart every 10 seconds, meaning their speed is estimated at 4,200–6,200 mph, a supersonic speed of Mach 5 to 8, at an altitude of 6.5 miles.

1978 December 14 — As a result of the Ground Saucer Watch lawsuit, the CIA releases some 340 of its own UFO-related documents, 900 pages in all. The letter, signed by CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator George Owens, states that 57 documents are being withheld for national security purposes. Also, 196 other documents originating from other agencies are forwarded to them for response to GSW. The CIA had faced a deadline of December 1977 to produce the documents but were granted an extension by US District Court Judge John H. Pratt.

1983 December 14 — 8:00 p.m. Realtor Antônio Nelso Tasca is driving about 4 miles north of Chapecó, Santa Catarina, Brazil, when he feels compelled to turn onto a dirt road. After about 5 minutes he encounters a white and green object like a bus about 33 feet long and 10 feet high in the road ahead. He stops 100 feet from it, turns off the headlights and engine, and walks toward it. It has 10 squarish windows and is floating just above the ground. A few feet away he begins to feel heat and decides to return to his car. Suddenly a beam of white-red light strikes him and somehow pulls him toward the object. He wakes up inside the UFO and an abduction scenario takes place, compete with sex with a light-haired alien female who says her name is Cabala. She gives him a message warning that continued deployment of nuclear weapons will lead to bad things for Earth. Tasca wakes up around 6:00 a.m. at a different spot from where he had the encounter. A medical examination reveals a strange burn on his ribs and other odd marks on his backbone. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1983-12-14-brazil-chapeco.htm ; Brazil 303–311

1987 December 14 — 9:30 p.m. A gray, oval-shaped object lands on the road ahead of a Mercedes car near Launceston, Tasmania. The engine and lights fail instantly, and the driver brakes to a stop. Intense light comes from the base of the object that is painful to the driver’s eyes. He leaves the car and gets sick, hiding behind a tree from where he watches his car being dragged about 33 feet, as if attracted by a magnet, and leaving tire marks on the road. A Land Cruiser approaches the scene and its lights fail, but the diesel engine continues to operate. The object takes off with a whirring sound. The car is covered with melted specks of asphalt, and serious electrical problems must be fixed after the incident.

2007 December 14 — 6:45 p.m. Witnesses in Kingsland, Georgia, see a triangular object with a light in each corner that changes from red t blue to white, with a bright burst happening occasionally. The object is moving slowly above their heads at about 500 feet altitude. http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/060/S60385.html

DECEMBER 13th

1909 December 13 — 10:00 p.m. A. W. Norris of Mabelvale, Arkansas, sees a bright, bobbling light moving through the air about 300 feet above him from the south.

1944 December 13 — SHAEF in Paris issues a press release identifying the fireballs as a “new German weapon” and that the Ninth Air Force has reported seeing “many silver balls floating in the air above enemy territory.” An Army Air Force spokesman says on December 20 that the silver balls have “no detectable effects” on Allied planes. He does not know whether or not they are metallic.

1948 December 13 — Project Sign files are sent to the Navy by Col. William R. Clingerman. http://www.nicap.org/docs/mantell/mantell480107docs27.htm

1948 December 13 — Aeronautical engineer James E. Lipp writes an 8-page memo to Brig. Gen. Donald Putt on “Special Design and Performance Characteristics That Are Believed to Distinguish Spaceships.” Rejecting out of hand ant links between UFO sightings and space travellers, it later appears as Appendix E-2 in the Project Grudge report. http://www.nicap.org/waves/481213lipp_letter.htm

1950 December 13 — 4:55 p.m. J. G. F. Moult and his mother are sitting at their home in Kimberley, South Africa, when they observe a bright object “like a huge mirror in the sky,” hovering, and moving laterally and up and down for about 3 minutes. It goes behind a cloud but can still be seen, appearing like a “piece of magnesium wire burning with a bright, purplish-white light.” It dives through the clouds, turns sharply, and shoots out of sight. http://www.project1947.com/fig/outspan54.htm

1952 December 13 — Morning. George Adamski’s scout ship makes a second appearance, this time at the Palomar Gardens Café, ostensibly so that Orthon can return the photo he borrowed. The film holder is pushed out of a porthole to the ground. One of the three Venusian photos taken by Adamski, though credited to Jerrold E. Baker, is taken secretly the day before by Adamski, probably of a model. Bill Moore claims in 1985 that the photos resemble the prototype space vehicle described in Mason Rose’s A Simplified Explanation of the Application of the Biefeld-Brown Effect to the Solution of the Problems of Space Navigation, published in February 1952

1956 December 13 — Capt. Karl Hars Dersson and the crew of the Danish ship Dorthe Maersk view an intensely bright fireball giving off weird flashes of light for 2–3 minutes north of Isla La Orchila, Venezuela. It explodes on hitting the water. Afterwards, the surface of the sea shimmers with various colors and is disturbed for 5 minutes. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1956-Nov-Dec-SN.pdf , p. 39-40

1967 December 13 — 2:00 a.m. As a man is driving near Edmonton, Alberta, his car lights dim and engine sputters. He pulls to the side of the road and opens the hood, when he notices a dome-shaped object hovering 450 feet away. It is metallic, has lights around the edge, and is about 50 feet high. The object rocks back and forth within a range of 10–15 feet but remains above the road. Over the next hour, the car body heats up and the witness’s hair gets hot. His flashlight fails to work. Finally, the object shoots straight up and vanishes in 2–3 seconds. His headlights come back on, but he starts the motor only with difficulty.

1977 December 13 — The UN General Assembly adopts Decision 32/424, which acknowledges Eric Gairy’s resolution, forwards it to member states, and shelves the matter until the next general assembly one year later. https://vdocuments.mx/mufon-ufo-journal-1977-11-november.html

1977 December 13 — The National Enquirer publishes Bob Pratt’s well-researched article, “UFOs Spotted at Nuclear Bases and Missile Sites” about the Northern Tier cases. He lists names and dates that can be used for a FOIA request, which UFO researcher Barry Greenwood promptly files.

1979 December 13 — 4:00 a.m. Two truckers (Wang Dingyuan and Wang Jianming) are driving separate vehicles on the Lanxi-Xin’angiang Highway near Longwangmiao, Zhejiang, China, when they see a bright beam of light ahead.
When the lead driver sees two “unusual human beings” standing on the highway, he stops. They are short, perhaps 4.5 feet tall, and wear what look like spacesuits. The second driver also stops but does not see the beings, which soon vanish. The drivers decide to switch vehicles. A few miles down the road, the new lead driver sees the same entities, and the men again stop the trucks. The drivers turn their lights off and on, but the beings remain. When one of the drivers emerges with a crowbar, they disappear.

2000 December 13 — 10;00 pm. A group of five people is traveling in a Volkswagen on a dirt road 9 miles from Iturama, Minas Gerais, Brazil—João Caiana, his wife Valdeir Martins, daughter Magui Martins, a 3-year-old granddaughter, and an 18-year-old friend. Some odd colored lights in the sky seem to follow them for 2 miles. Suddenly the interior of the car begins to get hot, and a light gray entity with big eyes approaches them. Everyone loses control and seems to be sucked into a UFO for an abduction scenario. https://ufo.com.br/artigos/caso-caiana-desdobramentos-de-um-classico-da-ufologia-mineira.html ; Brazil 393–396

2006 December 13 — Fastwalkers, a documentary on NORAD’s Defense Satellite Program and its detection of UFOs (Fastwalkers and slowwalkers) entering the Earth’s atmosphere, is released.

DECEMBER 12th

1948 December 12 — 9:02 p.m. Lincoln LaPaz and two USAF officers (Sandia Base Intelligence Officer Lt. Allan B. Clark and Sandia’s AF-Civil Air Patrol Liaison Officer Maj. Charles L. Phillips) see a green fireball near Bernal, New Mexico. He calculates that it is flying directly over Los Alamos National Laboratory, and it maintains its horizontal flight at the low altitude (for a meteor) of 8–10 miles. LaPaz arranges with the Atomic Energy Security Service to set up a patrol with Speed Graphic cameras to try to photograph the fireballs. http://www.nicap.org/starve481212dir.htm ; http://www.project1947.com/gfb/gfbchron.html

1951 December 12 — 3:50 p.m. USAF Capt. Donald “Deke” Slayton, flying a P-51 fighter at 10,000 feet, sees a whitish or gray object off his left wing about one mile away and 1,000 feet below his flight level about five miles southeast of Hastings, Minnesota. It looks like a kite at first, then like a weather balloon, then two rapidly revolving discs that overlap with centers about 1 foot apart. He attempts an intercept, but the UFO increases speed and disappears. http://www.nicap.org/511212hastings_dir.htm

1952 December 12 — The CIA, having learned that ATIC is withholding significant case reports for the upcoming Robertson Panel, sends a three-man team to Wright-Patterson AFB in order to obtain relevant documents. The team includes Robertson himself, CIA Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell, and CIA rocket consultant Frederick C. Durant, a personal friend of Ruppelt who urges him to comply. At ATIC they meet with personnel from Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, which has been studying the UFO data in great secrecy. Battelle requests the CIA to postpone the panel until March so they can finish the study. Robertson agrees to postpone the panel, but is later overruled by CIA Director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith. http://www.nicap.org/chronos/1952fullrep.htm ; https://sohp.us/Sign-Historical-Group-Workshop-Proceedings.pdf , p. 47

1957 December 12 — 5:45 p.m. At least 13 witnesses see a bright light over the Sea of Japan. The object is tracked on radar and seen through binoculars. At 7:22 p.m., a scramble is ordered and two F-86D’s take off from Misawa Air Base. Multiple radar and visual sightings take place over the next three days. http://www.nicap.org/571212misawa_dir.htm

1962 December 12 — 4:30 p.m. Five schoolgirls in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, see a brightly glowing UFO. All five students independently sketch a Saturn-shaped object.

1967 December 12 — Levine, Saunders, and Mary Lou Armstrong bring Hynek together with James McDonald to discuss forming a new group after the project ends, no matter what its conclusion is. The meeting goes fairly well. After Hynek leaves, McDonald brings up the Low memorandum. He has apparently heard about it from Keyhoe. Saunders gives him an official copy. Levine approaches Craig about a separate report, but Craig considers it mutiny.

1967 December 12 — The British Embassy in Moscow is directed by London to look into British-Russian cooperation in the investigation of UFO reports with Stolyarov’s Soviet UFO Study Group. The embassy does not hear back and does not pursue the subject.

1975 December 12 — Robert Suffern and his wife meet with two military officers, one Canadian, the other American, at his home near Bracebridge, Ontario. They tell him the October 7 incident was a “mistake” caused by the malfunctioning of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The officers show him close-up photos of UFOs and say that their governments have been cooperating with aliens since 1943.

1989 December 12 — 2:15 a.m. A man in Jupille-sur-Meuse, Belgium, wakes up to a dull throbbing noise coming from outside. He sees an enormous oval object seemingly jammed between two fir trees. On its circumference, small lights are changing color from blue to red and back. The object is metallic, with an oar or paddle at its rear. In the front is a window or cockpit. On the front part is a logo consisting of several ellipses crossing themselves. After a few minutes, the object rises slightly, the sound it emits changing slightly. It moves toward a neighbour’s meadow, shining down three beams of lights. Some moments later, it emits an intense and well-defined shaft of light into the sky. The witness goes back to bed. The next morning, he reports his sighting to the Gendarmérie, which investigates and finds a gigantic circular trace in the meadow. At the center, the grass has been cut off, but the cuttings are nowhere to be seen, and the grass within the circle is yellow.

1995 December 12 — 2:30 p.m. Farmer Egon Kratz and his son-in-law, Adilson Marcílio, are working on their Bela Vista Farm off Highway 227 about 5 miles from Ituporanga, Santa Catarina, Brazil, when a bright, silent, disc-shaped object appears low above some nearby trees, moves swiftly about 30 feet from the ground, and disappears into a valley. On December 15, Marcílio and some friends return to look for traces and find much of the vegetation scorched. Technicians from the Federal University of Santa Catarina arrive on December 20 to collect soil samples and rocks. Kratz notes in January that much of the foliage and vegetation where the UFO has passed is dead or defoliated.

DECEMBER 11th

1943 December 11 — US bombers conduct a daylight raid on Emden, Germany, and observe an unknown object about the size of a Thunderbolt aircraft over the target area. It passes below the bombers in a straight line and at terrific speed, leaving a vapor trail that persists.

1951 December 11 — Project Twinkle closes down.

1955 December 11 — 9:00 p.m. Near Jacksonville, Florida, two airline pilots and ground observers see a fast-maneuvering, orange-red, round object, with ground radar tracking. Two USN jets on a practice night-flying mission are vectored to the object by an Naval Air Station Jacksonville controller. On approach the object suddenly rises up to 30,000 feet then dives back down in a circle, buzzing the jets.

1979 December 11 — 11:45 a.m. Flight instructor Leslie Groves is tutoring a pupil aboard a Cessna 150 flying at 4,500 feet south of Bolton, Greater Manchester, UK, when he spots something strange that appears to come out of a cloud above Winter Hill. It is clearly a solid ball of white light that is passing in and out of the clouds. He asks the student to bank in order to minimize any risk of a collision. By now the object is pulling away in an arc described as a “well-controlled swooping motion” at about 2,500 feet.

1984 December 11 — North Hollywood film producer Jaime Shandera receives an unmarked package in the mail containing an undeveloped roll of 35mm film with the faked 1952 Eisenhower briefing document and the 1947 Truman MJ-12 memo. He tells researcher William Moore, and they have the roll developed. Postmarked Albuquerque, the package is most likely sent by individuals in AFOSI at Kirtland AFB, including special agent Master Sgt. Richard Doty, to plant disinformation in William Moore’s UFO research. They wait until 1987 to release the document.

1989 December 11 — 6:30 p.m. A 12-year-old boy and his family in Trooz, Belgium, watch a domed, triangular object for 15 minutes. It is hovering at first, then passes above their house. (Kean 28)
December 11 — 6:45 p.m. Lt. Col. André Amond of the Belgian Army and his wife spot a strange aerial object while they are driving on the deserted Rue de Sart Ernage between Ernage and Gembloux, Belgium. It looks like a series of 3–4 panels of light traveling north to south at an altitude of 650–980 feet. Beneath the series of panels, and close to the center, is a rotating red lamp. Amond stops where the road dead ends and watches the UFO pass for 2–4 minutes. Then the object abruptly changes course and silently heads in his direction. Only an enormous spot of white light is visible now, “much bigger than the spotlight of a big air carrier.” They both are frightened, so Amond starts the car again. The big light disappears, and three smaller white spotlights become visible, which form a more or less equilateral triangle. The rotating red light is still there, now seen in profile. The object then performs a turn of 180° to the left. The distance between the white luminous points is estimated at approximately 33 feet. They cannot distinguish any solid object around this triangle of three lights. The manoeuvre is majestic and slow. Next, the luminous points disappear. Only the red rotating light is still visible, and it takes off in a south-south-westerly direction. The duration of the sighting is about 5–8 minutes.

1996 December 11 — 7:00–8:30 p.m. At least 31 people in the Yukon Territory, Canada, witness a giant UFO. Indications are that it may be the size of several football stadiums. The sightings principally take place in four locations in the central Yukon: Fox Lake, Carmacks, Pelly Crossing, and Mayo, with 6, 9, 8, and 8 witnesses respectively. http://www.nicap.org/961211yukondir.htm

1998 December 11 — During mission STS-88, the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavor takes photos of an unusual dark object in low earth orbit. Conspiracy theorists claim it is an alien satellite, dubbed the Black Knight, in polar orbit around the Earth. However, the object is later identified as a thermal blanket that became dislodged and lost during a December 9 EVA by astronauts Jerry L. Ross and James H. Newman during their installation of antennas on the International Space Station. http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts88_and-black-knight.pdf

DECEMBER 10th

1948 December 10 — The revised Project Sign report is issued, Air Intelligence Report Number 100-203-79, “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.” (AIR 203) [Some copies are confusingly dated April 28, 1949.] This is the culmination of Sign’s work since early August, augmented by ONI collaboration over the past two months. UFOs are not extraterrestrial (the idea is hardly noticed). UFOs are probably real, but if so, there is a small chance that they are Soviet and therefore dangerous. All in all, the word “Soviet” dominates the commentary. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1948air.htm; http://www.nicap.org/docs/airintelrpt100-203-79.pdf

1950 December 10 — 7:30 p.m. RAF Group-Captain B. S. Cartmel and two friends are at the Wilderness Golf Course near Sevenoaks, Kent, UK, when they see a bright light moving east to west in complete silence. It maintains a steady height of 3,000 feet moving at 130–150 mph and is visible for 5 minutes.

1952 December 10 — H. Marshall Chadwell writes to Walter Bedell Smith that OSI has been working with mathematician Howard P. Robertson of Cal Tech to establish a panel of scientists (including astronomer Thornton Leigh Page) and engineers to review the status of UFOs in January. Somewhere along the line, MIT’s Lincoln Labs and CIS have been eliminated. http://www.cufon.org/cufon/cia-52-1.htm;

1952 December 10 — 7:15 p.m. The pilot and radar observer of an F-94 patrolling near Odessa, Washington, spots a light while flying at 26,000 feet. The crew calls the ground control station and are told no planes are in the area. They close on the object and see a large, round, white object with a dim reddish light coming from two windows. They lose visual contact but get a radar lock-on. When they attempt to close again, the object reverses direction and flies away. Several times the F-94 alters course to avoid collision. http://cufos.org/cases/1952_12_10_US_WA_Odessa_NICAP_pilots-Air-to-Air-Radar.pdf

1954 December 10 — An American petroleum engineer takes a photo of a formation of UFOs over El Tigre, Venezuela. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf, p. 52

1952 December 10 — 6:30 p.m. A doctor is driving near Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base in Caracas, Venezuela, when he and his father see two little men running near the road and ducking into shrubbery. Moments later a UFO rises up from the same spot and zooms away. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf , p. 52

1956 December 10 — 2:00 p.m. A US Air Force pilot sees a silver object with a “straight wing, having engine rods or large wing pods [or] intakes” flying at 56,000–62,000 feet for 15 minutes at Victoria, Texas. The pilot’s description is a dead ringer for a secret U-2 aircraft, which is what Blue Book suspects.

1963 December 10 — 11:30 p.m. A large, bright, dome-shaped UFO lands at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, UK, seen by two student cadets returning late from leave. It bathes the area in intense green light from a height of 10 feet, then disappears behind a hangar. Scorch marks are later found where the object had been. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1963-July-Dec.pdf, p. 85–86

1967 December 10 — 7:30 a.m. Psychologist Adina Păun is walking past the Republic Factories in Bucharest, Romania, when she sees a bluish-green object above the plant at about 45°. It has projecting, tapered spines that are as long as half its diameter. It is higher than rain clouds that sometimes obscure it, but lower than high-altitude, fast-moving white clouds. She continues watching it for 15 minutes as she walks along, but it drifts out of sight when she gets home on Magnet Strada.

1978 December 10 — The weekly Parade magazine carries a story by Michael Satchell titled “UFO’s vs. USAF: Amazing (But True) Encounters,” summarizing the events at Loring, Malmstrom, Wurtsmith, and other Northern Tier bases.

DECEMBER 9

1948 December 9 — Capt. Neef informs Lincoln LaPaz, director of meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, about the green fireball sightings. He says they do not sound like any meteors he is familiar with.

1952 December 9 — Col. Donald L. Bower forbids Ruppelt from visiting the CIA to give its Office of Scientific Intelligence certain UFO cases in preparation for the Robertson Panel in January. CIA consultant Frederick C. Durant learns about this the same day in a phone call to Ruppelt. https://sohp.us/Sign-Historical-Group-Workshop-Proceedings.pdf

1953 December 9 — 3:45 p.m. Charles Huaut sees a luminous, golden, round object poised motionless at a high altitude over Saint-Émilion, Gironde, France. After 10 minutes it noiselessly changes position and assumes the form of several horseshoes enveloped in smoke trails. Then it disappears.

1954 December 9 — Giovanni Aquilante, a farmer of Gricignano d’Aversa, Caserta, Italy, disappears after leaving home to work in the fields. His family and police fail to find him. On December 10, near 12:00 midnight, two of Aquilante’s sons and a friend see two mysterious entities with luminous eyes in a field. They quickly vanish. Aquilante returns home on the morning of December 11, silent and shocked, and explains that he met two “dwarfs” in the field wearing multicolored suits. They float him in the air and take him to “unknown places.” They release him, but promise to come back for him later. Aquilante is terrified of being abducted again.

1954 December 9 — Evening. Farmer Olmiro de Costa e Rosa is feeding his animals at Linha Bela Vista, said to be 2.5 miles from Venâncio Aires, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, when he hears a sound like a sewing machine that causes some of his cows to run. An object shaped like an “enormous, polished brass kettle” with a rectangular structure on top is hovering in the air with an oscillating motion. Two small humanoids “enveloped in a kind of yellow sack from head to toe” are standing in a nearby field. As he approaches, one runs toward him and the other raises its arm. The first one kneels down and plucks a tobacco plant from the field, then both jump into the craft, which vanishes within a few seconds. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1954-12-09-brazil-linhabelavista.htm

1954 December 9 — Night. Lorenzo Flores and Jésus Gómez are hunting near an unfindable town called Carera along the Transandean Highway in Venezuela. They run across a huge red UFO like two washbowls put together hovering above the road with flames spurting out. Four small hairy figures, 3 feet tall, scramble out and grab Gómez and try to drag him toward the craft. Flores strikes one with his gun butt, but it has no effect and feels like striking rock. The wooden rifle butt cracks from the impact. Gómez faints from fright, and both men are scratched and bruised. A passing motorist takes them to a police station, their clothes torn and skin abraded. When they tell their story to the police, it is obvious that their shirts have been shredded into ribbons. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf

1960 December 9 —8:30 p.m. Mme. Dhelens in the Château des Mailles (31 miles south of Carignan-de-Bordeaux), Gironde, France, sees a luminous oval object twice the size of an automobile hovering just above the ground in the château’s park. It has two round portholes, behind which she sees indistinct shadows moving. It takes off, leaving a 12-foot circle of yellowed grass, which later dies. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1960-July-Dec.pdf, p. 138

1965 December 9 — 4:47 p.m. A large, brilliant fireball is seen by thousands in at least six states and Ontario, Canada. It streaks over the Detroit, Michigan–Windsor, Ontario, area, reportedly drops hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio starting some grass fires and causes sonic booms in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. It is generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor after authorities discount other proposed explanations such as a plane crash, errant missile test, or reentering satellite debris. However, eyewitnesses in the small village of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, claim something has crashed in the woods. A boy sees the object land; his mother Frances Kalp sees a wisp of blue smoke rising from the woods and alerts local radio station WHJB. Another
observer reports feeling a vibration and “a thump” about the time the object reportedly lands. Others from Kecksburg, including local volunteer fire department members (Carl Metz and Paul Shipco), report seeing an object in the shape of an acorn and about as large as a Volkswagen Beetle. Writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs is also said to be in a band around the base of the object. A reporter and news director for WHJB, John J. Murphy, arrives on the scene of the event before authorities have arrived, in response to several calls to the station from alarmed citizens. He takes several photographs and conducts interviews with witnesses. His former wife Bonnie Millslagle later reports that all but one roll of the film is confiscated by military personnel. WHJB office manager Mabel Mazza describes one of the pictures: “It was very dark and it was with a lot of trees around and everything. And I don’t know how far away from the site he was. But I did see a picture of a sort of a cone-like thing. It’s the only time I ever saw it.” Witnesses further report that an intense military presence, most notably the US Army, is secures the area, orders civilians out, seals the area within 2 hours of the event, and then removes an object on a flatbed truck. The military claims they have searched the woods and can find “absolutely nothing.” The official explanation of the widely seen fireball is that it is a mid-sized meteor, as suggested, for example, by University of Michigan astronomer William P. Bidelman. However, speculation as to the identity of the Kecksburg object (if there was one—reports vary) range from alien craft; to debris from Kosmos 96 (James Oberg), a Soviet space probe intended for Venus that fails and never leaves the Earth’s atmosphere (now seen as unlikely); to a General Electric Mark 2 Reentry Vehicle (https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/missile-reentry-vehicle-mark-2 ) launched from Johnson Atoll in the Pacific on December 7 by the Air Force as a spy satellite (John Ventre and Owen Eichler); and a secret Corona spy satellite, KH-4A 1027, launched from Vandenberg AFB on December 9

1979 December 9 — 9:15 a.m. French Air Force Capt. Jean-Pierre Fartek and his wife observe an oscillating UFO hovering near the ground in front of a row of apple trees at his home in a village near Dijon, Côte d’Or, France. It looks like two “reversed saucers pressed against each other,” gray-metal above and dark blue below, with no lights or portholes. He describes the sighting to Gen. Denis Letty, who includes the case in the 1999 COMETA report. (Kean 124–126; https://www.ufocasebook.com/2010/fartek1979.html )
December 9 — 9:45 p.m. US Coast Guard Storekeeper 1st Class Michal Williams sees a stationary white light above the Mississippi River near the dam in Keokuk, Iowa. It lights up the river below it. The light moves straight up at high speed, changing from white to red and coming to an abrupt stop. The light goes out. Williams and a radioman see it again in the northeast and view it through binoculars. It has two red lights and a white light flashing irregularly. It flies around the dam and into the west-northwest in a matter of seconds.

1990 December 9 — 9:30 p.m. Mme. Cortvriendt and her husband are at the Waterloo exit of the Brussels Ring Road near Belle-Vue, Belgium, when they see a luminous triangle off to the right at an altitude of 160 feet. On its circumference are a multitude of white lights that are “bright as diamonds.” Stretching from the center of the object are four brass-colored arms in the shape of a cross. They lose sight of it as it travels away from them to the northeast.

2009 December 9 — Night. A large beam of light is seen and photographed for 10 minutes over all of northern Norway from Trøndelag in the south through all the counties further north, as well as parts of northern Sweden. The phenomenon consists of a blue beam of light with a grayish spiral emanating from one end of it. It moves from behind a mountain, stops in mid-air, and starts to spiral outwards. A similar, though less spectacular, event also occurred in Norway the month before. Both events have visual features of failed flights of Russian RSM-56 Bulava SLBM. The Russian Defense Ministry admits shortly afterward that such an event had taken place at the time on December 9.

DECEMBER 8

1941 December 8 — Around noon. Red Cross volunteer Yoshio Taketa is resting on the lawn of the Kuhio School in Honolulu, Hawaii, with 9 others. The smoke is still rising from the Pearl Harbor attack to the west. One of them notices a round white object at about 20,000 feet overhead. It floats away slowly.

1947 December 8 — Pilots observe a reddish light moving at moderate speed over Las Vegas, Nevada. It emits a flash of green light and shoots upwards at a “tremendous speed.”

1948 December 8 — Two AFOSI officers, Capts. Melvin E. Neef and John J. Stahl Jr., interview every agency that might know something about green-flare operations but come up short. That evening, they are flying a T-7 out of Kirtland AFB at 5,000 feet when they see a brilliant green light, larger and more brilliant than a meteor or flare, traveling a flat trajectory 2,000 feet above them. They see it for 2 seconds before it burns out. http://www.nicap.org/481208lvegas_dir.htm

1950 December 8 — The FBI Richmond office sends a telegram to FBI headquarters saying that local Army Intelligence has been put “on immediate high alert for any data whatsoever concerning flying saucers.” It adds, “CIC advises data strictly confidential and should not be disseminated.” http://www.nicap.org/docs_oakridge/fbi_501208.htm

1953 December 8 — The CIA reports that UFO sightings have fallen dramatically in 1953, though there are some of “possible scientific intelligence value.”

1957 December 8 — 5:30 p.m. A disc-shaped UFO with a dome and three pads on the underside suddenly comes toward a car with three passengers at Woodward, Oklahoma. The car heater, wipers, and radio fail and finally the car stalls out as the UFO hovers overhead at 200 feet. It emits a high-pitched whining sound. It is over 50 feet in diameter and has portholes. The whine increases in pitch after about two minutes, and the UFO rises vertically out of sight. The headlights come on and the engine of the car starts by itself. The driver spends 4 hours with two Kirtland AFB officers who tell him of similar observations.

1967 December 8 — 7:40 p.m. Marilyn Wilding, 15, goes out on her front step in Idaho Falls, Idaho, to look for a friend. A light reflecting on the snow on the ground causes her to look up, and she sees a brightly lit circular object “about as big as a car” hovering above the house. The object then tips and rotates so she can see it has a transparent dome on top. Inside the dome are two indistinct figures. The object rotates clockwise, maintaining its inclination. It begins moving away; as it recedes into the distance, its light dims and turns orange. http://www.noufors.com/circular_object_with_dome_and_two_%27figures%27_inside.html

1973 December 8 — While harvesting, farmer Kevin O’Connell finds seven sections of his oat crop flattened into circles 3 miles west of Bordertown, South Australia. They are spread over 20 acres and the largest is 14 feet in diameter. The oats are flattened counterclockwise.

1977 December 8 — 8:00 p.m. Air traffic controllers at Oxnard, California, track 4 UFOs about 3–5 miles north of Laguna Peak. They watch the targets for nearly 3 hours. Around 9:00 p.m., a Golden West commuter aircraft reports two large bright lights maneuvering around it for 15 minutes. The pilot says the object approaches so close that it “scared the hell out of me.”

1978 December 8 — The United Nations meetings on UFOs conclude, resulting in UN Decision 33/426 relating to the “establishment of an agency or a department of the United National for undertaking, coordinating, and disseminating the results of research into unidentified flying objects and related phenomena.” Beyond newspaper publicity, the meetings have no impact and no other nation backs Grenada.

1981 December 8 — 7:30 p.m. Alma Hobbs is driving with her two children on State Highway 12 three miles southwest of Reserve, New Mexico. An enormous UFO shaped like an orange ball, estimated to be 750 feet in length, makes a number of turns in the sky. They arrive at a restaurant near the intersection of State 12 and US Highway 180, where Dan Luscomb and Rosie Tafoya also see the object, which executes a 90° turn near Luna Mountain as a jet aircraft chases the UFO out of sight.

DECEMBER 7th

1953 December 7 — 9:30 p.m. Pfc Alfred V. De Bonise and Sgt1C James Conley of the 89th Anti-Aircraft Battalion at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, spot a white object, “shining like a star.” It makes a noise like an artillery shell in flight. It moves erratically and eventually falls out of sight. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1953-Aug-Dec.pdf , p. 60

1953 December 7 — Radio Moscow proclaims that saucers are “figments of the imagination of western warmongers.”

1954 December 7 — A Project Blue Book memo acknowledges the many “Foreign Sightings” in Europe, but attributes the cause to an increase in “meteorite activity” and overseas translations of Keyhoe’s book Flying Saucers from Outer Space.
https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1954-Nov-Dec.pdf , p. 49

1959 December 7 — Maj. Gen. James H. Walsh writes to Lt. Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, commander of ARDC, regarding transfer of UFO duties.

1977 December 7 — The United Nations draft resolution on UFO investigations is shelved until next year’s General Assembly.

1983 December 7 — 9:00 p.m. A woman and her son and daughter stop at the Pioneer Road exit off I-43 near Cedarburg, Wisconsin, to watch a brightly lit object silently descend and manoeuvre in front of them for 5–6 minutes.

1997 December 7–14 — The first World Forum of Ufology takes place in Brasília, Brazil, coordinated by the Brazilian Ufologists Commission. The coalition of researchers is comprised of Claudeir Covo, from the National Institute of Aerospace Phenomena Investigations (INFA); Rafael Cury, from the Núcleo de Pesquisas Ufológicas (NPU); Reginaldo de Athayde, from Ufological Research Center (CPU); Marco Antônio Petit, from Fluminense UFO Research Association (AFEU); and Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues and Ademar José Gevaerd, both from the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research (CBPDV), the largest UFO group in the country. The event culminates in the Brasilia Letter, a document signed by nearly all ufologists present, representing their nations and research entities. The letter conveys the position of ufologists to the Brazilian government to take the necessary steps required to clarify the UFO question.

DECEMBER 6th

1737 December 6 — Afternoon. A large, blood-red object is seen in the western sky at Bucharest, Wallachia [now Romania]. It lingers for two hours before splitting up then reuniting once again.

1948 December 6 —Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, commander of the Seventeenth District AFOSI at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, orders an investigation into the previous night’s green fireball.

1948 December 6 — Project Sign is ordered to send copies of all its future cases and analyses to Maj. Boggs of the Office of Defensive Air, the ONI, and the USAF Scientific Advisory Board.

1948 December 6 — 10:55 p.m. Atomic Energy Security Service Officer Joseph Toulouse sees a greenish flare one-third the apparent size of the moon at Sandia Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is visible for 3 seconds before it arcs downward and vanishes.

1950 December 6 — 10:30–11:04 a.m. The ConAC Air Defense Controller notifies the HQ USAF that a number of unidentified aircraft are approaching the northeast area of the United States and that there is no reason to believe they are friendly. By radar contact it is determined that approximately 40 aircraft are in the flight at 32,000 feet on a course of 200° northeast of Limestone, Maine. The White House is notified at 10:31 a.m., and President Truman discusses the reports in a meeting with UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee. http://www.nicap.org/501206rina_dir.htm; http://www.nicap.org/reports/rina4.htm

1950 December 6 — While F-94s are being tested at Dyess AFB near Abilene, Texas, radar catches a UFO on a high-speed intercept course with the planes. Some personnel see the object shortly afterward. Col. Robert B. Willingham claims it is not a missile. It makes 90° turns at high speed. NORAD tracks it and the object is said to crash near the Mexican border near Del Rio, Texas. Willingham and a copilot take a light aircraft to the site but are escorted away. They do see part of the crash field and pick up a small piece of metal from the ground. Willingham takes it to a Marine Corps metallurgy lab in Hagerstown, Maryland, for analysis but never sees it again. http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/del-rio-ufo-crash-and-mj-12.html ; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=61

1950 December 6 — Dubious MJ-12 documents refer to a UFO crash on the Mexico side of the US border in the area between El Indio, Texas, and Guerrero, Coahuila, Mexico. http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=375

1952 December 6 — 5:24 a.m. The 3-man crew of a USAF B-29 (1st Lt. Norman Karas and 1st Lt. William W. Naumann) over the Gulf of Mexico 100 miles south of Louisiana track five unidentified blips on the bomber’s radar. They maneuver around the plane at a speed of 5,240 mph. The crew sees some flashes of light, but the targets are 20 miles or more away. The five UFOs merge with a huge blip that accelerates and vanishes at a speed of 9,000 mph. (http://www.nicap.org/reports/521206gulf_weinstein.htm). Keyhoe gives the number of crewmen as four: Capt. John Harter, Lt. Sidney Coleman, M/Sgt Bailey, and S/Sgt Ferris, which might be pseudonyms. http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/coleman52.htm

1957 December 6 — A letter written to contactee George Adamski on State Department stationery from R. E. Straith, Cultural Exchange Committee, is a hoax concocted by ufologists Gray Barker and James W. Moseley. The letter informs Adamski that the State Department knows his claims are true and they encourage his activities.

1958 December 6 — Between 6:38 and 6:40 p.m. Along the border of Russia and India, an observer sees a bright UFO cross his field of vision through his telescope from north to south as he is observing Mars. He thinks it might be Sputnik 3, but the location and direction of the object do not bear that out.

1973 December 6 — 6:45 p.m. Witnesses at Fabrègues, Hérault, France, see a landed domed disc on legs with a brightly lit “blister” on top, flashing red and white lights around the rim and making a humming sound. A door opens and a ladder unfolds, causing the witnesses to flee. The craft changes to an orange glow and chases them. Later, four imprints in a 51-inch square are found, along with ladder marks. The area appears “swept” as if by a blast.

1977 December 6 — 7:30 p.m. Three people in a car near Tatapouri Point, New Zealand, see a red disc coming from the direction of the ocean. It seems to follow their car for about one mile until the driver stops. At that instant, the object veers off into the hills northwest toward the Waimata Valley. They note their car lights are much dimmer than usual, and on arriving at their destination discover that the car battery has no water in it.

1978 December 6 — 11:30 p.m. While patrolling at Marzano, near Torriglia, a village northeast of Genoa, Italy, 26-year-old night watchman Piero Fortunato Zanfretta notices four lights moving in a courtyard. He gets out of his car holding his pistol and flashlight, moving cautiously along a house wall. Something pushes him forward and he falls. When he gets up, his head hits something and he points his flashlight upward to see a 6-foot-tall creature with an ugly face. Terrified, he runs to the car and is blinded by a yellow, triangle-shaped object taking off from behind the house. He calls for help on the radio. When his colleagues arrive at 1:00 a.m., they find him lying in a nearby lawn in a confused state of mind. On December 23, Zanfretta is hypnotized by a medical doctor. An abduction scenario emerges in which he is taken to a bright room by giant entities who put a hot and painful helmet on his head. The humanoids are green-skinned and have yellow triangular eyes, red veins on their heads, pointed ears, and rounded fingers. Further abductions and memories emerge over time, finally ceasing in 1980.

1980 December 6 — 9:01 a.m. Jean Findley of Poole, Dorset, UK, is waiting for a bus and feels the urge to look up. She sees a disc-shaped, domed UFO hovering above nearby trees. Feeling “spellbound” and experiencing a sensation of “peace, calm, and warmth,” she watches the object emit a beam of light, rotate once, and fly away at a great rate of speed. She looks at her watch and sees that 4 minutes have elapsed, seemingly in the space of a few seconds. Even though it is rush hour, she sees no one else around.

1988 December 6 — Lazar reports to work at the EG&G building at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. There he meets with a security officer named Dennis Mariani, who escorts him on a flight to Area 51 at Groom Lake, where Lazar signs a secrecy agreement that requires intensive monitoring of his activities. He and Mariani board a bus with blacked-out windows and ride for 30 minutes down a dirt and gravel road. They arrive at a base near Papoose Dry Lake known as S-4. Lazar’s ID is prepared, he is given a physical and treated for allergic reactions to unknown substances, then he begins work at S-4. Lazar claims he only visits S-4 on six or seven occasions between December 1988 and April 1989 to learn about Project Galileo, which deals with gravity and propulsion, and training on an “antimatter reactor.” He also reads about a second project, Looking Glass, concerned with seeing back in time.

DECEMBER 5th

1737 December 5 — 5:00 p.m. Physician Thomas Short witnesses a blood-red luminous display in the sky around Sheffield, England, which moves from west to north and then to the east. The cause seems to be one or more clouds in which are embedded brilliant lights as bright as the full moon that give off slow-moving streamers or rays. The display is accompanied by unseasonable heat and lasts until 10:30 p.m. Short hears that a similar phenomenon is seen at the same time in Venice, Italy, and Kilkenny, Ireland, where it appears as a bursting fireball.

1897 December 5 — Early morning. Engineer John J. Hussey and fireman John Henderson of the Great Northern Railroad in northern Minnesota see a “large, white long light which seemed surrounded by some dark objects” near Deerwood. Other employees of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways also view the light

1945 December 5 — A training flight (Flight 19) of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers disappears while over the Atlantic Ocean. The squadron’s flight plan is scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for 141 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returns to base. The disappearance is attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel. One of the search-and-rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappears. A tanker off the coast of Florida sees an explosion and a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather is becoming stormy by the end of the incident. According to contemporaneous sources, the Mariner has a history of explosions due to vapor leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation. None of the Avenger bombers have been found. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19

1948 December 5 —9:05 p.m. Pilot Capt. William R. Goade is flying a USAF C-47 from Denver to Phoenix. Just west of Las Vegas, New Mexico, he and his copilot Maj. Roger Carter spot a bright green flash. Some 22 minutes later, an identical flash rises from the east slope of Sandia Park and follows a parabolic curve as the C-47 passes 20 miles northeast of Albuquerque. Capt. Ernest Van Lloyd and the crew of Pioneer Airlines Flight 63 also see the second
object, described as first orange, then green. http://www.nicap.org/481205lvegas_dir.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/albuq481206dir.htm

1950 December 5 — Oak Ridge engineer Lt. Col. John R. Hood disperses radiation counters around the laboratory’s restricted area. The intent is to map the presence of any unusual radiation, in the wake of numerous UFO reports over the facility. He also sets up a source of radioactive material to see if its presence has an effect on the air above it. If the air is unusually ionized, it might be the source of the anomalous radar targets. He also mentions using a magnetometer array, but there is no documentation of the result of this effort. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1950-Aug-Dec.pdf

1960 December 5 — Pentagon UFO spokesman Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker publishes Flying Saucers and the U.S. Air Force, in which he blisteringly attacks critics of Project Blue Book, depicting them all as charlatans and opportunists and gullible believers.

1960 December 5 — Keyhoe debates Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker on the Today show, hosted by Dave Garroway. Tacker says he wrote the book Flying Saucers and the US Air Force because “I felt the Air Force was being set upon by Maj. Keyhoe, NICAP, and other hobby groups who believe in spaceships as an act of pure faith.” Keyhoe repeatedly challenges Tacker, whose statements ring hollow, and even Garroway asks Tacker pointed questions and coolly notes Tacker’s apparent ignorance of basic physics. The show generates numerous phone calls and letters to NBC, most of them critical of the Air Force. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1960-July-Dec.pdf , p. 129–135; http://www.nicap.org/jufoh/JournalUFOHistoryVol1No4.pdf , pp. 3–6

1965 December 5 — During the Gemini 7 mission, the astronauts mention a “bogey.” James Oberg, based on his trajectory analysis of the mission, describes the astronauts’ comments as referring to booster-associated debris and not a reference to some sort of UFO. Astronaut Frank Borman later confirms that what he saw was not a UFO. When he offers to go on the television show Unsolved Mysteries to clarify, the producers tell him, “Well, I’m not sure we want you on the program.”

1967 December 5 — 10:30 p.m. Six teenagers returning from a basketball game in Concordia, Kansas, detour to drive by a cemetery. They see a light blinking in the sky ahead, moving in an up-and-down motion to the north. It appears to be flashing different colors or rotating. They follow it for about two miles, hoping for a better look.

1976 December 5 — 2:30 p.m. Several witnesses at Sollefteå, Västernorrland, Sweden, observe an elongated object (an estimated 148 feet long) with round openings along the fuselage. A blue-green light is shining from the openings, a red light at the front, and a diffuse orange glow from the underside. The object hovers above a military base built into the mountainside at an elevation of about 165 feet. After a while, the object moves on and hovers above a nearby power station. Then it moves jerkily sideways, jumping rapidly between different positions. After hovering for 15 minutes, it tilts up and rapidly speeds upwards and out of sight, disappearing at 3:30 p.m.

1979 December 5 — 5:55 p.m. Norma White watches a bright star from her restaurant in Ansted, West Virginia. It remains stationary for 15 minutes at a height of 2,000 feet over the mountains to the north. Then it approaches her, passing overhead at 100 mph. It hurts her eyes to look at it. Then the light goes out, allowing her to see a Y-shaped object emitting a dull green light. Clusters of red lights are at the three points of the Y. It silently turns and flies off to the east. Other lights appear in the sky (18 or so) and are observed by police officers Charles Crosier and Dan Cohenour.

1988 December 5 — Robert Lazar interviews at EG&G again for what seems like a part-time position.

1989 December 5 or 12 — 9:50 p.m. A couple is driving on the Trierer Strasse in Aachen, Germany, when they see a flying object cut across the road in front of them to the right. It has two headlights in front, emitting beams that slant downwards. There is a flashing orange light on the underside. The same object reappears at their home around 11:15 p.m.

DECEMBER 4th

1896 December 4 — 6:30 p.m. Travelers on a freight train between Dixon and Elmira, California, see two large, bright lights moving parallel with them at about 1,000 feet altitude. The lights outdistance the train and disappear to the southwest.

1952 December 4 —The CIA Intelligence Advisory Committee recommends that “the Director of Central Intelligence will ‘enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories.’” The meeting, chaired by Chadwell, is attended by Robert Amory Jr., Gen. John Samford, Rear Admiral Carl F. Espe, Gen. John M. Willems, William Park Armstrong, Walter F. Colby, Col. Edward R. Porter, and Col. Jere Boggs. This is to be done “immediately” through a National Security Council Intelligence Directive and is essentially the go-ahead for what will be the Robertson Panel.

1952 December 4 — 8:46 p.m. USAF pilot Lt. Robert O. Arnold, 3640th Pilot Training Wing, Laredo AFB [now Laredo International Airport], Texas, is flying a T-28 trainer at 6,000 feet when he sees a bright bluish-white glowing object below him at about 1,500–2,000 feet and rapidly climbing to his level. It shows no navigation lights. He tightens his left turn to keep the object in view, but it suddenly climbs to 9,000 feet in several seconds and drops down to his altitude again, then stops and hovers. Arnold pursues but after 2 seconds the object suddenly heads towards him on a collision course at high speed at 8:53 p.m., wavering slightly at about 300 feet. He sees the object as a blurred reddish-bluish haze smaller than his T-28. It rapidly ascends to 15,000 feet then circles left as if positioning for another pass. In fear Arnold turns off his running lights, spirals down to 1,500 feet while keeping the object in sight as it continues to head towards him in a dive, then pulls up and climbs out of sight. A lighted weather balloon is launched at 8:53 p.m. from Laredo AFB but it is not observed near any aircraft. http://www.nicap.org/521204laredo_dir.htm

1978 December 4 — The CIA passes on three other UFO documents to the NSA for declassification review.

1979 December 4 — 5:00 p.m. Two witnesses are driving on State Highway 32 near Mansfield Depot, Connecticut, when they see a bright, football-shaped “cloud” hovering low over the trees to the north, turning slowly. The driver stops just north of the intersection with US Highway 44. The object is now seen to have a complex shape with multiple lights as it hovers above some power poles to the west. It starts moving slowly to the south. The witnesses try to follow it but lose sight of it.

1980 December 4 — 8:38 a.m. Graham Moyle and other controllers at the Perth, Western Australia, airport report watching “silver tumbling discs” two or three times through 11:00 a.m. Danielle Russell, 12, sees four objects with lights that change color from red to blue to green moving quickly north to south at 11:00 a.m. There is a reported paint on the radar 7 miles distant at a speed of 138 mph and a height of 5 miles. The target is lost in the radar’s cone of silence. The RAAF scrambles a Macchi jet, but it cannot find the objects. At 1:20 p.m., a target is detected on the radar at 21 miles, due south. The tower tracks an object high above one of the runways. Five minutes later, the radar returns another target.

1988 December 4 — 5:25 a.m. A police officer enroute to his station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, notices a brilliant glow in the sky ahead of him. It is so bright he can hardly see as he drives down a four-lane road, and he swerves and blocks two lanes. About 150 feet in the air is a 75-foot-long, highly polished silver object shaped like an ellipse. It is emitting a humming sound and casting light into and all around his car. It moves left and right, then shoots straight up into the sky, stopping again briefly before departing. The officer’s eyes hurt badly from the brightness, and he feels ill. There is a sunburn-like rash on his face, and he has severe eye irritation, headache, and neck pain after the incident. He notes that the paint on his car has been dulled and an unusual powder-like substance is found on the exterior.

2018 December 4 — The independent documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers is released. The film, available on Netflix beginning in June 2019, “chronicles the challenges and travails of a cosmic whistleblower. Burdened with a revolutionary secret, he had to choose between his oath to his country or his conscience. Jeremy Corbell’s film explores Lazar’s groundbreaking claims and the devastating impact it has had on his life over the course of the last 30 years, including rare and never before revealed footage guaranteed to alter the landscape of the debate.” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9107368/ ; https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-did-the-fbi-raid-the-home-of-the-biggest-alien-truther ) “Unfortunately, Corbell busies up the documentary with a barrage of images of atomic age archival footage and such that after awhile make the movie seem more like a collage than a film. There is also the psychobabble narration that is mumbled by Mickey Rourke; at times poetic, at times it comes off like comic relief. It’s distracting and unnecessary.” (https://carlosdev.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/bob-lazar-area-51-flying-saucers/)

DECEMBER 3rd

1946 December 3 — The Swedish military reports that about 100 impacts were investigated by the Defense Research Institution and not found to be rockets. http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron3.htm

1948 December 3 — 8:15 p.m. Sgt. Bruce Earlin McFarland, control tower operator at Fairfield-Suisun AFB [now Travis AFB] at Fairfield, California, watches for 25 seconds a round, white light fly with variable speed (200–400 mph) and a bouncing motion, finally disappearing after a rapid, erratic climb to 20,000 feet. http://www.nicap.org/fairfsuis481203dir.htm

1952 December 3 — In another “Flying Saucer” memo, Chadwell admits the Air Force would be suspicious of any MIT Lincoln Lab involvement, and that Princeton or Cal Tech would do, and that “it will be necessary to secure the full backing of the DCI in order that a scientific review of the problem may be laid on.” However, he recommends that this “External Research Project Concerned with Unidentified Flying Objects” be administered by Max Millikan at the MIT Center for International Studies.

1957 December 3 — 2:30 p.m. Z. Thad Fogl, radio officer of the SS Ramsey, claims to have taken a photo of a saucer off the coast of San Pedro, California. The photo appears in Flying Saucer Review in 1959 and Life in 1966. However, in 1967 Fogl admitted that he had faked the photo using parts of plastic airplane models. http://www.nicap.org/5712XXcalifornia_dir.htm

1967 December 3 — Early a.m. Police Sgt. Herbert Schirmer checks on restless cattle twice at a barn near Ashland, Nebraska. At 2:30 a.m. he is driving on US Highway 6 when he notices some red lights along State Route 63 that might be a stalled truck. He drives a short distance up that road and stops with his headlights shining on the object. The red lights are blinking through the windows of a disc hovering at a tilt 150 feet away and 6–8 feet above the road. It
looks made of shiny, polished aluminum. It ascends slowly with a sort of siren sound and emits a flamelike substance from the bottom. His head sticking out the window, Schirmer watches it pass overhead then shoot up out of sight. He drives back to the police station and writes in the logbook, “Saw a flying saucer at the junction of highways 6 and 63. Believe it or not!” He is puzzled to see it is 3:00 a.m. He gets a headache and a buzzing noise in his head. He also has a red welt below one of his ears. In the morning, Chief Bill Wlaskin goes to the site and finds a piece of metal that he shows to Colorado project investigators. It turns out to be composed of iron and silicon. On February 13, 1968, Schirmer is hypnotized in Boulder by Leo Sprinkle. During the session he remembers that his car engine and radio failed, and a blurry white object came out of the UFO and communicated with him telepathically. He is taken on board by aliens (who first ask him, “Are you the watchman over this place?”). They are humanoids, 4–5 feet tall with long heads, gray-white skin, and cat-like eyes. They wear silver-gray helmets with small antennas on the left side of the ear area. Their uniforms and gloves are the same color. An unusual feature of this case is the emblem of a winged serpent on the left breast of each entity’s uniform. The Colorado project comes to a predictable conclusion: “Evaluation of psychological assessment tests, the lack of any evidence, and interviews with the patrolmen left project staff with no confidence that the trooper’s reported UFO experience was physically real.” Schirmer undergoes hypnosis again on June 8, 1968, and more details emerge. http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/10/schirmer-abduction.html

1969 December 3 — The NICAP board of governors demands Keyhoe’s resignation. He retires, under protest, at age 72. Leading the effort is board chairman Col. Joseph Bryan III, who takes over as acting president. http://www.cufos.org/UFOI_and_Selected_Documents/UFOI/050%20MAY%201970.pdf

1973 December 3 — James Yorke and his family watch a triangular UFO with colored lights on the bottom for 15 minutes 2 miles north of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. It is over Minas Basin and crossing the water very slowly.

1979 December 3 — 10:20 p.m. Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer John Pushie takes 7 photos (four of which turn out) of a bright light from his home 7 miles west of Sydney, Nova Scotia. The light hovers in one spot then moves quickly away at one point. He shows them to the commanding officer of CFS Sydney Radar Base [now closed] in Lingan Road, who says he wants to send them to the National Research Council. One month later they are returned with a note saying that Pushie had photographed the star Vega.

1980 December 3 — 8:30 p.m. On State Highway 57 about 10 miles south of McLain, Mississippi, Robert and Janice Lowrey see a luminous, blue-white ball of light to the east. The FM radio of their car quits, the car’s headlights dim, and the car heater quits when light comes briefly over the right side of the hood. They estimate the light to be about a foot in diameter and only 3 feet away. The seat belt alarm also comes on during the encounter. The light just vanishes.

DECEMBER 2nd

1950 December 2 — Cmdr. Charles Peter Edwards, Canadian Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, approves Wilbert B. Smith’s proposed plan to use the Department of Transport lab and field facilities during off-hours to gather quality UFO data. It is called Project Magnet.

1952 December 2 — CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence Director H. Marshall Chadwell writes another secret memo to Director Walter Bedell Smith on UFOs: “At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. The details of some of these incidents have been discussed by AD/SI with DDCI. Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.” Physicist Julius Adams Stratton and economist Max Millikan tell Chadwell that scientists at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory would like to be a part of any scientific study of the UFO phenomenon, perhaps through Millikan’s MIT Center for International Studies. Stratton indicates that Lab Director Albert G. Hill should organize the study. Attached is a draft of an intelligence directive by Chadwell on behalf of Smith to the National Security Council recommending that the CIA “formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects.” But Smith refuses to approve or sign the directive because he is briefing the president directly.

1959 December 2 — A bright, circular object is seen in the sky heading southwest over Ghazni, Afghanistan. It disappears after 2 minutes.

1966 December 2 — Wertheimer goes to Washington, D.C., to interview witnesses of the National Airport radar-visual sightings of 1952. Virtually every witness disputes Gen. John A. Samford’s explanation of temperature inversions.

1967 December 2 — 9:30 p.m. A lieutenant-major in the Romanian army is on duty in the radar station at Băneasa Airfield [now Aurel Vlaicu International Airport] near Bucharest when he goes outside to observe an airplane. But the supposed aircraft is a strong, stationary light 30–40° in the north that descends rapidly, ascends again, moves left to right, then descends again. Through binoculars it looks conical or bullet shaped. Dozens of other personnel watch it until it disappears around 11:30 p.m.

1972 December 2 — 11:30 p.m. Four witnesses in Hinojos, Huelva, Spain, see a fiery, square-shaped object flying close to the ground, lighting up the terrain. The headlights in two cars die. The car with a gasoline-powered engine also stalls, but the car with the diesel engine keeps running.

1974 December 2 — 10:30 p.m. Dairy farmer William L. Bosak is driving back to his house southeast of Frederic, Wisconsin, on County Road W when he sees an object reflected in his headlights on the westbound side of the road in front of him. It is a disc-shaped UFO, the bottom half obscured by the fog. But what holds his attention is something inside the object’s “curved front of glass.” Inside stands a figure with its arms raised above its head. He thinks the figure is as scared as he is because its eyes are protruding. It is generally human in shape, but its body is covered in dark tan fur except on the face and chin. Its head hair seems to be swept back, and the calf-like ears stretch out about 3 inches. The mouth and nose seem flat. Bosak speeds past the object and his car lights suddenly go dim. He hears a whooshing sound, and the UFO is lost to view.

1978 December 2 — A civil servant takes a photo of a UFO as he is walking along a beach in Kuwait. It shows a domed disc with a self-luminous tube protruding from the bottom. Other witnesses also see the UFO.

2002 December 2–13 — The Sci Fi channel airs a fictional miniseries about UFOs and abductions titled Taken, produced by Steven Spielberg. The show takes place from 1944 to 2002 and follows the lives of three families: the Crawfords, who seek to cover up the Roswell crash and the existence of aliens; the Keys, who are subject to frequent experimentation by the aliens; and the Clarkes, who sheltered one of the surviving aliens from the crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taken_(miniseries)

DECEMBER 1^st

1919 December 1 — Boni & Liveright publishes Charles Fort’s first book of scientific anomalies, The Book of the Damned. Fort gathers reports of objects or “vessels” that he humorously speculates might be visitors from a multitude of worlds that have come to earth over the centuries. Among his wilder expressions is the suggestion that floating land masses in the sky harbour civilizations and oceans. Fort also speculates that someone is fishing for us and that an alien race considers us its property, warning off all interlopers. It receives positive reviews from Ben Hecht and Booth Tarkington.

1957 December 1 — 1:30 a.m. Swissair pilot Walter Borner is flying a DC-6B at 18,000 feet over Ras El-Kanayis, Egypt, when he sees a “giant, red, burning cylinder falling down vertically, leaving a yellowish trail.” It is possible that this is the re-entry of the final stage of the rocket that launched Sputnik I.

1959 December 1 — At a NASA news conference in Washington, D.C., Cal Tech geochemist Harrison Brown suggests that boneless animals similar to jellyfish abound in oceans on Venus. The speculation comes in the wake of the discovery that the planet’s atmosphere contains water vapor.

1967 December 1 — Condon and Low write Keyhoe back separately and do not commit to looking at his reports, although they praise NICAP’s assistance. http://www.cufos.org/UFOI_and_Selected_Documents/UFOI/040%20JAN-FEB%201968.pdf 

1979 December 1 — The US Strategic Air Command assumes control of the ballistic missile warning system and all Space Surveillance Network facilities from the deactivating Aerospace Defense Command, with data streams continuing to flow to NORAD. NORAD retains the radar networks and operates many radar sites jointly with the FAA as Semi-Automatic Ground Environment.

1988 December 1— Robert Lazar allegedly interviews at EG&G, but is informed that he is overqualified for the position in question

1988 December 1 — 11:00 p.m. A captain of the Brazilian Air Force flying a Mirage fighter jet is returning from a mission and is over Jaboãtoa dos Guararapes, Pernambuco, Brazil, when his radar indicates traffic about one mile from his position. He requests permission to intercept and goes after the brilliant disk-like object that has a dull glow like copper. The CINDACTA III radar still finds nothing. The UFO begins to approach the jet and suddenly his instruments begin to fail. A red light in the center begins to grow stronger and the pilot arms his missiles; but the missiles do not respond to his command and the UFO flies off in mere seconds. But the chase continues another 10 minutes, during which time the UFO plays with its pursuer. After landing, the pilot is told that another aircraft has seen a strange object about 15 minutes earlier in the state of São Paulo more than 1,242 miles away.

1989 December 1 — Weather forecaster Francesco Valenzano and his young daughter are walking in the Square Nicolaï in Ans, Liège, Belgium, when they see a large, slow-moving craft approaching at low altitude. The object silently makes a tour of the square; when it passes over their heads, they notice it has a delta shape with three lights in a triangular position and a red rotating light in the middle and positioned lower than the belly of the object. 

1989 December 1 — 6:50 p.m. An amateur photographer is sitting in his living room at Eupen, Belgium, when he sees a lozenge-shaped UFO with two white lights at each corner. He draws a sketch but fails to take a photo. He sees a similar object on January 10, 1990.

1993 December 1 — The European Parliament considers a resolution that enables the French UFO agency, Service d’Expertise des Phénomènes de Rentrée Atmosphérique (SEPRA), to carry out UFO investigations throughout the member countries of the European Community. The resolution was first proposed in 1991 by Belgian deputy Elio Di Rupo in the wake of the Belgian UFO wave to set up an all-European agency to study UFO reports. The EP’s committee on industry, external trade, research, and energy, chaired by physicist Tullio Regge, holds several meetings on the proposal in consultation with SEPRA’s Jean-Jacques Velasco, and approves the motion for a resolution. However, the Parliament does not have the necessary votes to implement and fund the resolution, the agency is never created, and SEPRA has its own funding problems.

1994 December 1 — A strong, flaming light with a train-like rumbling noise causes destruction to 1,700 square feet of woodland in the Guiyang Baiyun Duxi Forest Farm near Guiyang, Guizhou province, China. Trees are broken off at the same height and some roofs are damaged. Although a probable airburst from a meteor, some Chinese researchers argue it could be a ufological event.

2009 December 1 — The UK Ministry of Defence shuts down its UFO hotline and closes its UFO desk, ostensibly because it has produced “no defence benefit” and no evidence of extraterrestrial aliens in more than 50 years. But the staff is overwhelmed by public inquiries, which are at a 10-year high.