>>>>>> New Episode of The Unconventional UFOlogist <<<<<<

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

JANUARY 31st

1897 January 31 — 9:30 p.m. A “large, glaring light,” apparently from an airship, is seen for nearly 30 minutes west of Hastings, Nebraska, hovering, ascending, descending, and moving at a “most remarkable speed.”
1916 January 31 — 8:25 p.m. Royal Flying Corps Lieut. Reginald Maxwell is cruising his B.E.2c biplane at 10,000 feet near Romford, Essex, UK, patrolling for German Zeppelins. He sees an “artificial light” to the north. He follows it northeast for 20 minutes, but it moves higher, and he loses it in the clouds. At the same time, Royal Flying Corps pilot Sub-Lieut. J. Eric Morgan, also flying a B.E.2c at 5,000 feet near Rochford, Essex, and looking for Zeppelins, sees an object about 100 feet away with a row of windows “like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn.” He tries to close on it, but his engine is malfunctioning. When he fires his pistol at it, the lights rise and rapidly disappear. Morgan is forced to make a crash landing. http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/hist1916.htm ; http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/hist19162.htm

1948 January 31 — The Research and Development Board dismisses flying saucers as “a mirage induced by mass self-hypnosis” in stories that appear in newspapers of this day. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1948a.htm;

1949 January 31 — Kirtland AFB in New Mexico notifies the Pentagon that it will launch an immediate investigation of the green fireballs, noting that “local commanders [are] perturbed by implications of phenomena.” LaPaz speaks to dozens of witnesses of the January 30 fireball, and manages a rough triangulation of the fireball’s 143-mile path from Amarillo to Lamesa, Texas. He estimates its speed at 25,000–50,000 mph, with a beginning altitude of 60,000 feet and a final altitude around 40,000 feet. LaPaz accompanies search teams to bring back any fragments. They end up in the area of Lamesa but give up after a few days of fruitless search. He later tells AFOSI agent Paul Ryan that the fireballs are artificial, perhaps radio-controlled missiles directed by enemy agents in the Southwest. http://www.nicap.org/docs/foia05.jpg

1949 January 31 — The FBI San Antonio field office issues a memo on UFOs, “Protection of Vital Installations.” It is sent to Hoover, G-2, ONI, OSI, and mentions a meeting among these groups on UFOs, “considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the army and the air forces.” http://www.nicap.org/docs/490131_fbi.pdf

1952 January 31 — Ruppelt releases Project Grudge Status Report #3, in which he reviews the geographic distribution of UFO reports, states the project’s obstacle, and includes a list of 15 cases reported to ATIC in January. https://www.slideshare.net/alexpituba/projects-grudge-and-bluebook-reports-1-12-nicap

1953 January 31 — Project Blue Book issues its Status Report #9. https://www.slideshare.net/alexpituba/projects-grudge-and-bluebook-reports-1-12-nicap

1956 January 31 — 3:24 p.m. Kentucky National Guard pilot Lt. Col. Lee J. Merkel is flying an F-51 Mustang out of Standiford Field [now Louisville International Airport] in Louisville, Kentucky, on a maintenance test flight. His aircraft crashes 10 miles north of Bedford, Indiana, following some confusing information from various sources about an unknown radar target or visual observation in the vicinity.

1957 January 31 — US Army Order number 30-13, “Sightings of Unconventional Aircraft,” stipulates that personnel involved in sightings must “not discuss or disseminate such information to persons or agencies other than their superior officer(s) and other personnel authorized by the Acting Chief of Staff, G-2, this headquarters,” by order of Col. Charles L. Olin. http://www.cufos.org/CSI_NY/CSI_NY_%2320.pdf

1958 January 31 — A meeting is held in the office of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Richard E. Horner under the auspices of the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, even though Sen. John L. McClellan (D-Ark.) and other senators are absent. The Air Force is represented by Maj. James F. Byrne, Maj. Joseph E. Boland, Maj. Lawrence J. Tacker who meet with the subcommittee’s FBI liaisons. Tacker declares that USAF does not want a congressional investigation, and the McClellan effort dies immediately.

1967 January 31 — Saunders stops in at NICAP in Washington to pick up some case material. Keyhoe and Hall show him a clipping about Condon’s statements in Corning, New York. Saunders suggests that Condon is misquoted. But several NICAP members had been in the audience, and one has already resigned to protest NICAP’s support of a sham investigation.

1968 January 31 — McDonald sends Low a 7-page, single-spaced letter, citing Condon’s negative statements, his preoccupation with crackpot elements, Condon’s failure to conduct any investigations himself, the lack of communication between Low and Condon and the active investigators, and the failure of the project to take seriously any assertions of cover-up. He mentions Low’s memorandum, saying “I am rather puzzled by the viewpoints expressed there.” He concludes: “I am not opposed to negative findings—on UFOs or other scientific questions; what bothers me is that it appears that these negative findings were being adumbrated as early as January 1966, and perhaps even earlier.” He sends a copy to the project’s open files.

1968 January 31 — Morning. At Lajes Air Base on Terceira in the Azores, a Portuguese military watchman, Serafim Vieira Sebastião, notices a strange interference on his transistor radio. Looking around, he sees an oval metallic object surmounted by a transparent tower on top of which is a small balustrade on which two beings are leaning. The silhouettes of two more beings are visible in the tower. The object is hovering above a munitions dump. Serafim phones one of the other sentries then shines his flashlight on the machine. As he does so, the men on the tower see him. The object emits a cloud of gaseous dust that overpowers him. When his colleague finds him a few minutes later, the object has vanished. https://ufoportugal.blogspot.com/2017/10/o-caso-ilha-terceira-31-de-janeiro-de.html ; http://www.angelfire.com/space2/insolito/terceira.htm

1969 January 31 — After a series of UFO sightings and radar trackings beginning in October 1968, the US Air Force and Army set up another UFO observation network in the West Central Highlands near Pleiku, Vietnam, using pulse acquisition radar, continual wave acquisition radar, and illumination radar. The system picks up 365 unidentified tracks through April.

1975 January 31 —10:20 p.m. Alan Lott is walking his dog in Caversham, Berkshire, UK, when he sees a group of bright lights to the east. He calls his wife, Clarice, and they both view the lights through binoculars. They are moving slowly and silently in a straight line from east to west and are now directly above the Lotts’ house. The three brightest lights are orange-yellow and arranged in an equilateral triangle formation. There are two smaller lights, one red and another white. After 5 minutes, the formation vanishes behind houses and trees.

1976 January 31 — 3:30–5:00 a.m. UFOs are spotted by security police over the radar site at the Armament Development and Test Center at Eglin AFB, southwest of Valparaiso, Florida. Photos are taken. http://www.nicap.org/760131eglindoc.htm

1978 January 31–February 1 — 6:15 p.m. Four boys are playing on the ice of the Montvale (N.J.) Memorial Elementary School playing field. They notice an “airplane” that passes slowly over the field; moments later, another object arrives, shaped like a square with large yellow lights in each corner, with a slight dome on top and a red light underneath. It emits a red beam of light toward the ground but stops short before touching it. They next notice several humanoid figures moving around the school park, walking stiffly. They are about average height and bald-headed, dressed in bright yellow outfits with boots and gloves. One of them looks different, because he has a larger head that seems “creased” down the middle and has on a brown cape over the yellow suit. As the boys watch, they note an uncanny silence and an unpleasant sulphur-like odour. The figures walk away toward the nearby Public Works Garage. The boys then notice another figure, this one a woman standing in the parking lot. She has medium long brown hair and wears a dark suit with blue fur around her shoulders. She walks in slow motion and sits down on a low fence and raises her arm very slowly, pointing to the sky at another hovering square object. The woman then walks toward the Public Works building and at one point seems to appear and disappear as a police vehicle drives by near her. A similar scenario occurs the next evening. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1978-01-31-usa-montvale.htm

JANUARY 30th

1945 January 30 — 12:10 a.m. A 415th Night Fighter Squadron crew observes two amber-colored “lights in the air at 2,000 feet” between Wissembourg, Bas-Rhin, France, and Landau, Germany. They seem to be about a foot in diameter and 20–50 feet apart. The lights follow their Bristol Beaufighter, closing in to about 1,000 feet before disappearing.

1945 January 30 — Capt. Fred B. Ringwald, intelligence officer for the 415 Night Fighter Squadron, responds to Corning’s January 16 request by offering a summary of 14 foo fighter reports from December 14, 1944, to January 29, 1945.

1949 January 30 — 5:54 p.m. Hundreds of people see a green meteor come out of the northwest and vanish southwest of Roswell, New Mexico. It is completely silent.(Clark III 540; http://www.nicap.org/sands490130dir.htm; http://www.nicap.org/docs/foia05.jpg ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1949-Jan-Jun.pdf , pp. 15–16

1970 January 30 — 3:30 p.m. Project Blue Book’s doors close as its office is staffed for the last time. The files have been packed in boxes and are on their way to the Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama.

2020 January 30 — The UK National Archives and Ministry of Defence announce another “final” release of UFO files. https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/30/ministry-defence-insider-reveals-contents-britains-final-ufo-x-files-12152206/

JANUARY 29th

1913 January 29 — 8:00 p.m. An airplane with a powerful searchlight is seen over Iasi, Romania, coming from the direction of Russia. It maneuvers over the town for 10 minutes and then moves toward the barracks. Troops are mustered out and signals are given for the aviator to land. Two warning shots are fired, but the lights go out and the object disappears.

1951 January 29 — USAF Lt. Col. Milton D. Willis replies to Robert B. Sibley, president of the Aero Club of New England, who has written Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter asking that the UFO project be reinstated because pilots are indeed seeing something that could be extraterrestrial. Willis writes that, although the UFO project is disbanded, the Air Force still investigates incidents and sends them to AMC if necessary, and an officer (Willis himself, who has replaced Boggs) monitors all UFO reports. As an aside to his superiors, Willis in a memo notes that “there have been several incidents, during the last six months, which cannot be explained and further investigation may be necessary.” https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1951-SN.pdf, pp. 7 –8;

1952 January 29 — Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, USAF Assistant for Production of Intelligence, and his staff are briefed on the status of Project Grudge by Edward Ruppelt, who with his colleagues at ATIC has prepared sighting maps that show a concentration of cases at White Sands, Los Alamos, Killeen Base, Oak Ridge, and Dayton, Ohio (where Wright-Patterson AFB is situated). At this meeting, Garland introduces a new intelligence policy that emphasizes the use of instrumentation for intelligence collection, including the detection and tracking of UFOs (the basis for terminating Project Blue Book as an intelligence function). As an interim last-chance measure to prove whether anecdotal sightings have any value, Garland approves Ruppelt’s publicity plan to draw in UFO reports from the public so that triangulations might be obtained. This leads to Garland secretly backing the Life magazine article. http://www.nicap.org/docs/NARA-PBB85-612-615.pdf ; https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1952-Jan-May.pdf, pdf

.
1952 January 29 — Gen. Garland gives the welcoming address to the secret MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Ruppelt calls it the Beacon Hill group) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he tells the assembled scientists to study ways USAF intelligence methodology can be revolutionized through the use of technology. (Later Garland sends Ruppelt, Col. Sanford H. Kirkland Jr. of ATIC, and Lt. Col. William A. Adams of AFOIN, to brief the Lincoln Lab scientists on UFOs on March 26 and in April 1952, respectively). http://www.nicap.org/chronos/1952FIXED.htm

1952 January 29 — On his trip to the Pentagon to brief Gen. Garland, Ruppelt visits the AFOIN offices and discovers they have more complete files than ATIC in Dayton does. He arranges to have copies made of the missing files for him at Project Grudge (though multiple visits are required to obtain the copies and Ruppelt probably does not succeed in getting everything). The offices with UFO files include the Technical Capabilities Branch (TCB) of the Evaluation Division and the Collection Control Branch of the Collection Division. http://www.nicap.org/chronos/1952FIXED.htm

1952 January 29 — Night. A bright orange, disc-shaped object, also described as a “huge ball of fire,” paces two B-29s on the same night, 80 miles from each other over the towns of Wonsan and Sunchon, North Korea. http://www.nicap.org/520129wonsan_dir.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/520129sunchon_dir.htm ;

1959 January 29 — Ruppelt still thinks that the Robertson Panel has accepted Garland’s recommendation to expand Blue Book (it hasn’t) and that its education and debunking recommendation means that UFO information should be released to the public (it didn’t). Fournet, Chop, and Col. Teabert (Kenneth E. Thiebaud?) of AFOIN-2 think the same. In Washington, Ruppelt hears that the press has heard rumours about the Utah film, and he decides to release it, focusing on the seagull explanation.

1959 January 29 — A briefing of the Office of Naval Estimates Board by the CIA on UFOs includes the showing of the Utah and Montana films. http://www.nicap.org/cia/cia530130memo.htm

1959 January 29 — 9:55 a.m. A small gray oval-shaped object is seen between Houlton and Chatham, Maine, by 2nd Lt. Fred T. Goetting Jr., pilot of an F-94B. Goetting points out the object to his radar observer, Lt. Howard C. Kelley. The object appears to be 10° above the F-94B, which is at 23,000 feet. Goetting attempts to intercept the object at a speed of 0.8 Mach. This chase continues for 8 minutes without the F-94 gaining, and the chase is broken off because of low fuel. The object is seen by at least two fighter aircraft from other squadrons. http://www.nicap.org/530129presqueisle_dir.htm

1959 January 29 — 11:30 p.m. A farmer named Lloyd C. Booth just north of Conway, South Carolina, hears a commotion of animals, grabs his .22 revolver, and sees an oblong-shaped, lighted object 10 feet above the trees moving slowly or hovering, with a low humming sound. He shoots at the object twice. The first bullet bounces off with a metallic sound; at the second shot the object tilts slightly and ascends at a 65° angle to the west at 600–700 mph and disappears. One of his cows had died the previous evening. http://www.nicap.org/530129conway_dir.htm

1959 January 29 — 2:20 p.m. Northrup test pilot Rex Hardy Jr., test pilot Chester Mathews, and Northrup photographer Jim Wilkinson see four metallic, disc-shaped object the size of a B-36 flying in squadron formation over Malibu Beach, California. They estimate their height as 20,000 feet and speed as 1,200 mph. They watch for about 5 minutes. http://www.nicap.org/530129malibubeach_dir.htm

1962 January 29 — A Royal Dutch Air Force pilot flying an F-86 Sabrejet sights a UFO over eastern Netherlands. The jet’s radar also picks up the object and control tower radar (somewhere) is also tracking it. He attempts to give the object an urgent warning by radio, but it goes unheeded. He arms a Sidewinder rocket and tries to close in, but the UFO pulls away swiftly before he can fire.

1965 January 29 — In Monterey, California, Mayor George Clemens and his family see a bright light performing acrobatics in the northern sky. It hovers, then shoots straight up about 500 feet, fades, drops down, and hovers again. Then it drops toward the water and disappears. The Coast Guard finds nothing.

1986 January 29 — 7:50 p.m. Inhabitants of Dalnegorsk, Primorskiy Krai, Russia, see a reddish ball about half the size of the full moon. The ball is flying soundlessly parallel to the ground. It is later determined that its speed is approximately 34 mph and that it is about 2,300–2,625 feet in altitude. When the object reaches Height 611 (also known as Mount Izvestkovaya) it starts to descend and then crashes into the hill. All witnesses but one agree there is no sound when the object reaches the ground. Some say the object falls with a flash and is not visible after that; others claim it oscillates at altitude above the hill, radiating light of varying intensity as it goes up and down. The light given off by the object is described by some as a forest fire, which lasts for approximately one hour. A scientific team led by Valery Dvuzhilny, head of the Far Eastern Commission for Anomalous Phenomena, arrives on the site on February 3. Some rocks at the impact site have drops of silvery metal, which are later determined to be lead. The type of lead found on Height 611 is different from lead found in local lead deposits. Also, black, glassy, drop-shaped beads and mesh fragments are found at the site. In all, approximately 70 grams of lead, 5 grams of mesh fragments, and 40 grams of beads are discovered. The radiation level of the landing ground is normal. Photos of the site using two different cameras all develop as blank. Chemical analyses of the beads show they are mostly composed of lead, silicon, and iron. Some of the drops contain significant amounts of zinc, bismuth, and rare earth elements. An analysis of the soil, rocks, and burned wood taken from the landing ground shows that the chemical composition is similar to the composition of samples taken from the site of the 1908 Tunguska event. The mesh fragments are also analyzed; the material does not dissolve in strong acids and organic solvents, even when exposed to high temperatures for prolonged periods of time. One of the mesh fragments is discovered to be composed of scandium, gold, lanthanum, sodium, and samarium. An analysis of another mesh fragment shows gold, silver, and nickel. After that fragment is heated in a vacuum, the analysis no longer shows these elements; however, molybdenum and rhenium are detected. The concentration of gold found in one of the mesh fragments is equivalent to 1,100 grams per metric ton. This is much higher than gold deposits in the region, which become economic to extract when the concentration of gold reaches 4 grams per metric ton. There are no gold deposits in Dalnegorsk that contain gold at concentrations high enough to extract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_611_UFO_incident ; http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Dalnegorsk_01.pdf

JANUARY 28th

1953 January 28 — 1:06 p.m. R. W. Love and a Mr. Ferrenti, while engaged in retrieving radio-controlled drones on a boat 1,100 yards offshore and south of Naval Air Station Point Mugu [now Naval Base Ventura County] near Oxnard, California, see a white, flat disc with fuzzy or shimmering edges rapidly approach from the north-west flying straight and level, overtake a jet aircraft, pass overhead, and disappear in the haze to the east. http://www.nicap.org/530128pointmugu_dir.htm

1953 January 28 — A Maj. Geyer at Mitchel AFB [now closed] near Uniondale, New York, investigates reports of a UFO seen by both civilian and military witnesses. The UFO is an oval object glowing with different colors and having a tail or projection. He quickly concludes that it is a meteor and submits a report to Blue Book. However, one of the witnesses, author Marie Armstrong Essipoff (Ben Hecht’s first wife), later writes to Keyhoe saying that she had told Geyer that the object wobbled and it had a turret on top. She drew a picture and Geyer said it looks like one of their flight simulators. But it’s “still a meteor,” he said

.
1953 January 28 — 9:40 p.m. Maj. Hal W. Lamb, USAF senior pilot at Moody AFB in Valdosta, Georgia, apparently sees the setting planet Venus changing color and shape while flying a T-33. It is also seen by Turner AFB [now Naval Air Station Albany] tower operators in Albany [not Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta], Georgia (with time errors of about 10 minutes). About the same time, two GCA radar maintenance men at Turner AFB radar track three moving targets and a stationary target. At 10:10 p.m., the GCA reports two stationary targets at 17 and 27 miles, both 300° azimuth. No visual confirmation though binoculars are used. http://www.nicap.org/530128georgia_dir.htm

1954 January 28 — Australian Minister for External Affairs Richard Casey suggests there is a correlation between UFO sightings and “periods of intense meteorite activity.”

1958 January 28 — Hillenkoetter announces that “two committees on Capitol Hill” are investigating the UFO controversy. Rep. William Hanes Ayres (R-Ohio) writes a letter to constituent Melvin V. Knapp, saying that “Congressional investigations have been held and are still being held on the problem of unidentified flying objects (UFO’s). Since most of the material presented to the committees is classified, the hearings are never printed. When conclusions are reached, they will be released if possible.”

1959 January 28 — At a Symposium on Aerospace Technology by the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences at the Astor Hotel in New York City, USAF Maj. Gen. Donald J. Keirn, assistant deputy chief of staff on development for nuclear systems, talks about nuclear aircraft propulsion. He mentions that if intelligent extraterrestrials do exist, “it is entirely possible that some of them may have passed through our stage of evolution, and may have already achieved a higher level of social and technological culture than our own.” He suggests using electromagnetic emissions to detect them, as they may be doing with us.

1975 January 28 — Afternoon. Swiss eccentric and contactee Billy Meier sees a disc-shaped spacecraft and takes several photographs of it. The ship lands in a nearby meadow, and a beautiful, pale-skinned, amber-haired spacewoman steps out and approaches him and talks to him for an hour and a half. Her name is Semjase from the planet Erra in the constellation Lyra (although they have since emigrated to the Pleiades), and she is the granddaughter of a being named Sfath, who had contacted Meier in 1944. Many other contacts continue, and Meier produces more photos so that he becomes a regional occult celebrity. https://www.billymeierufocase.com/index.html

1994 January 28 — 1:14 p.m. Air France pilot Jean-Charles Duboc and two members of his A320 airliner crew briefly observe over Coulommiers–Voisins Aerodrome, Seine-et-Marne, France, an elliptical UFO, reddish-brown in color and possibly of large size. Radar at CODA, the Taverny air operations center, tracks the object for 50 seconds but places the target closer to the airplane than the pilot’s estimate. SEPRA investigates the case and determines that based on the radar trajectory the UFO is about 750 feet long. http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/may/m02-014.shtml ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvFoZu3u_Ds

JANUARY 27th

1913 January 27 — 9:00 p.m. A resident of Stretford, Greater Manchester, UK, sees an aircraft “like a huge ball” passing silently overhead in a southerly direction. He estimates its speed at 40 mph and its altitude as 700 feet. It has a yellowish light that later turns light red. When it is over Eccles, it turns westward in the direction of Liverpool. https://airminded.org/2013/01/31/friday-31-january-1913/

1934 January 27 — Swedish MP Arvid Lindman puts a question to Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, asking what action the government plans to take about the ghost fliers.

1947 January 27 — RAF Flying Officer Stewart of the Northern Signals Area, after investigating the Operation Charlie radar incidents at RAF Neatishead, issues a report, no longer extant, that suggests that some of the targets are radiosonde balloons released by the USAAF’s 8th Weather Squadron in Downham Market, Norfolk. However, RAF and Air Ministry sources continue to refer to the sightings as unexplained over the following months. http://www.martinshough.com/aerialphenomena/opcharlie.pdf

1949 January 27 — 10:20–11:20 p.m. Capt. Eckerman Sannes, acting chief of the Aircraft Branch at Eglin AFB near Valparaiso, Florida, and his wife are driving slowly on Cortez Road between Bradenton and Cortez, Florida, when they observe a “cucumber-shaped” object. The object, seen through binoculars, seems as long as two Pullman cars, with 7 lighted, square windows. It is throwing sparks and approximately 8–10 miles away. In the first sighting at 10:20 p.m., the object approaches from the south going north, moving from an altitude of 8,000 feet in a gradual descent until lost behind trees. In the second sighting at 11:20 p.m., the object is seen in the north, heading south and making a gradual turn to the west. It descends then climbs with a bouncing motion (up 4,000 feet, down 2,000 feet) at about 400–500 mph, resulting in an overall climb and loss to view at an altitude of around 40,000 feet. The bouncing appears to start after the final 270° course change to the west. http://www.nicap.org/490127cortez_dir.htm

1957 January 27 — Former CIA director Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter joins NICAP’s board of directors. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1957-Jan-Mar-22.pdf , p. 31

1965 January 27 — 6:00 p.m. NASA research engineer A. G. Crimmins Jr. observes an object at Plum Tree Island Wildlife Refuge, near Poquoson, Virginia, that is approximately 75 feet across and 10–15 feet in height. The object has 3–7 lights colored red and orange and appears to rotate. It moves approximately a quarter mile west of its original position on a zigzag course and then appears to land on the ocean shore. It remains still for about 5 minutes, then takes off to the north and turns right to depart to the east at a high rate of speed. Crimmins watches it through 20x binoculars. The same object is apparently seen by retired USAF Maj. John R. Nayadley, another NASA research engineer, who observes a V-shaped object with blinking red-orange lights over Hampton, Virginia. http://www.nicap.org/650127plum_tree_isle_dir.htm

1977 January 27 — 1:05 a.m. A 19-year-old trucker is driving on State Highway 329 southeast of Prospect, Kentucky, when he spots a rectangular, orange-red object coming down near his jeep. His radio fails 15 seconds into the sighting. He feels compelled to watch the object, which stays in the vicinity only a short time. When he arrives home, he discovers that it has taken 45 minutes to complete a 7-minute trip. Later under hypnosis, he relates being taken inside the object and examined by three strange creatures who are shaped like machines (looking like a giant one-armed tombstone, a 7-foot teletype machine, and a man-sized Coke machine). The electrical system on his jeep goes haywire the day after the abduction.

1978 January 27 — Early morning. Four men on the banks of the River Weaver see a silver balloon-shaped object land in a meadow near Frodsham, Cheshire, UK. It emits a strong purplish glow that makes it hard to look at. Two entities of normal height emerge. They wear silvery suits and have miners’ lamps on their heads, and these glow purple. Cows on a nearby field seem to become paralyzed, unable to move. Using a metal cage, the entities pen in one cow and seem to measure it. The witnesses become frightened and run from the area, and as they run they feel a strange tingling sensation in their groins. One of the men develops sunburn-like marks on his leg.

1983 January 27 — 7:00 p.m. Peggy Iery sees a large central white light with two flanking lights over some power lines as she is returning home 2 miles north of Marquette, Michigan. Suddenly it appears over her car and seems so huge that it blocks out the sky. Its shape is a perfect pentagon with a small white light at each of the corners; the bottom is silvery and flat. She drives home quickly, and she and her husband see four lights nearby, which gradually recede beyond the trees.

1987 January 27 — The National Security Agency responds to a letter from Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) stating that the NSA’s Project Aquarius does not deal with UFOs, but that “Apparently there is or was an Air Force project by that name which dealt with UFO’s.”

1997 January 27 — 10:40 p.m. A man is driving on a quiet back road just south of Llangynidr, Powys, Wales, when he sees a “massive star” moving toward him. His car radio fails, and he is unable to use his mobile phone to call for help. He stops and gets out of the car. The glowing tube of smoky gray and blue light descends and encircles the car, remaining for 5 minutes. The witness can move around in the cloud but can hear no sound associated with the object. After the glow vanishes, he remains frightened and a bit sick. The car is coated with dust of unknown origin. He drives home to Newport, and the following morning he notices a skin rash.

2004 January 27 — Night. Alec Birch, who has confessed to faking a UFO photo in 1962, takes a series of color slides showing the town hall in Retford, Nottinghamshire, UK, for a photography competition. He sees nothing unusual at the time, but on examining one transparency he finds an image that appears to be an elliptical UFO. Ruling out lens flares and aircraft, he contacts the Ministry of Defence, which sends the slide to the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency for analysis. The agency reports back to the MoD on August 2, saying that no definite conclusions can be reached, but “it may be coincidental that the illuminated plane of the object passes through the centre of the frame, indicating a possible lens anomaly, [for example] a droplet of moisture.”

2005 January 27 — Ancestry.com, the owner of Fold3, illegally demands that Greenewald remove his Blue Book collection from the Black Vault website, falsely claiming copyright. They are still unavailable.

JANUARY 26th

1899 January 26 — 11:00 p.m. People outside the opera house in McAlester, Oklahoma, watch an airship “like a railway car suspended from a large balloon-like arrangement” pass overhead. It shines a bright searchlight along the ground.

1948 January 26 — Project Sign becomes formally operational as Project HT-304. Lt. Col. James C. Beam becomes its first project director.

1953 January 26 — Air Force Press Officer Albert M. Chop writes a letter to Keyhoe’s publisher Henry Holt & Co., declaring that all the sighting reports he is using for his upcoming Flying Saucers from Outer Space were cleared and made available to him from Air Technical Intelligence records. http://nicap.org/chop2let.htm

1958 January 26 — 4:00 p.m. Some chemical workers at Shimada, Japan, see a bright object land and claim that beings fall from the sky without parachutes. They wear strange suits and speak an unknown language.

1965 January 26 — Evening. Steven Houffer, 16, and six friends are driving on US Highway 250 near Brands Flats, Virginia, when they see a small man walking toward the road from a field. He sits down and peers intently at passing cars. Houffer stops the car and he and his friends get out. When they approach, the being runs up a hill. Two other entities appear and run in the same direction. They are all about 3.5 feet tall, wear silvery one-piece garments, and leave no footprints. Police officers conduct a search with local photographer Charles Weaver, but find nothing. Sometime later, Houffer and Weaver see a “glowing aluminum barn,” which they go down to investigate. Weaver is walking around inside when something hits him on the head. The two turn to run after Weaver snaps a photo. In the light of the flashbulb, they see a little man standing by the barn. The photo is allegedly confiscated by government agents.

1974 January 26 — 2:59 a.m. Capt. Lars Berglund and the crew of a Boeing 727 airliner flying near Lisbon, Portugal, see a V-formation of 10–15 luminous orange discs. Berglund rules out a satellite re-entry because of its precision. After the formation passes, another Portuguese aircraft reports the same objects to ground control. A Norwegian and a British aircraft also report the same phenomenon.

1990 January 26 — British-Armenian orchid hunter Habib “Henry” Azadehdel (pseudonym “Armen Victorian”) calls Eric A. Walker and has an extended conversation about an alleged South African UFO crash with insect-like aliens. Walker hints that there has been governmental collaboration with aliens in the past.

1996 January 26 — Several scientists and military personnel linked to NASA arrive at the University of Campinas. The cover story is that US scientists are choosing Brazilian scientists to take part in future space missions.

JANUARY 25th

1913 January 25 — 7:00–8:30 p.m. Several people see a mysterious aircraft over the Club moor neighbourhood of Liverpool, UK. It is traveling about 25 mph and carries a brilliant light. https://airminded.org/2013/01/28/tuesday-28-january-1913/ )

1913 January 25 — 8:25 p.m. Villagers of Chancery, Ceredigion, Wales, watch a mystery airship with searchlights that turns south and leaves in the direction of Carmarthenshire. https://airminded.org/2013/01/30/thursday-30-january-1913/

1954 January 25 — The British Air Ministry and the British War Office order airmen and soldiers to tell the public nothing about UFOs. (Wilkins, Attack, 308)

1954 January 25 — 10:00 p.m. A civilian employee and astronomer, Robert D. Schaldach in the Technical Service Unit at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, is setting up his ballistic camera to monitor a missile test. As he looks at the stars to calibrate his instrument, he notices a yellow-white light moving from northeast to southeast in a shallow arc. It pulses in brightness at regular intervals. At the same time, another observer 17 miles to the southeast also sees the object. They perform some triangulation measurements and determine that the object is about 12 miles distant and moving at 12,000 mph. Schaldach says it is not a meteor. Blue Book, no doubt Hynek, labels it as a meteor.

1964 January 25 — The London UFO Research Organisation merges with the British UFO Association (a consolidation of several UFO groups in the UK) to form the British UFO Research Association. It begins publishing a new magazine, BUFORA Journal, in the summer.

1967 January 25 — Condon gives a talk in Corning, New York, and says: “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there’s nothing to it … but I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.” Keyhoe is astonished by Condon’s remarks. http://www.nicap.org/docs/condon_01.pdf

1967 January 25 — 6:35 p.m. Betty Andreasson has her first abduction experience in South Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Placed under hypnosis on several occasions in 1977, Andreasson relates that following the appearance of the creatures every member of the family except her enters a state of paralysis “as if time had stopped for them.” A Christian evangelical, Andreasson thinks they must be angels. The culminating event is when Andreasson witnesses a giant phoenix-like bird burn up and reappear from the ashes as a giant worm. Further hypnotic probing brings forth apparent memories of lifelong interactions with extraterrestrials. Raymond E. Fowler’s 1979 book about the case contains the first reference to an implant in abduction literature, a motif that later becomes
much more common. https://www.ufoinsight.com/the-extraordinary-claims-of-betty-andreasson/

1969 January 25 — 12:30 a.m. A young couple is driving near Plattville, Illinois. The woman sees a bright object like an ice cream cone low in the sky ahead, traveling big end first. They get within a quarter mile and the object turns point up and only 30 feet off the ground. Security lights on a nearby farmhouse go off. The object spins and flashes, and the car engine and lights go off. The front end of the car lifts 3 feet off the ground. The UFO moves away and the car drops and regains its power.

1971 January 25 — 9:30 a.m. Gunar Gruenzner is taking photos of the scenery near Praia da Armação beach in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil, when he claims to see an intense light beginning to descend. He snaps a photo but can no longer see the light. The photo shows a circular light with a dark aura. Probably a film defect. https://www.caelestia.be/praia.html

1996 January 25 — The US military arrives in Campinas by helicopter, where the entire university is on standby.

2004 January 25 — 6:26 p.m. A woman and her son watch a strange triangular object in the sky above Richibucto, New Brunswick. It has sparkling lights on top and a V shape on its underside. In a telescope, they can see it is a large gray object with something like a round door on the bottom. It suddenly speeds up and disappears in the distance.

JANUARY 24th

1949 January 24 — An FBI memo from D. M. Ladd to Hoover documents speculation on a Soviet nuclear-powered disc by USAF Col. Clyde D. Gasser of the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Gasser reports rumours coming from Wright-Patterson AFB that nuclear-powered disc-shaped planes might be making incursions into US airspace and returning to the USSR over the North Pole.

1950 January 24 —4:50 p.m. USAF Capt. G. B. Edwards and copilot Theron C. Fehrevach are flying a C-45 transport plane from Pope AFB [now Pope Field], Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Bolling AFB [now Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling], Washington, D.C. While at 5,000 feet near Blacksburg, Virginia, Fehrevach notices a dark, 200–250 foot in diameter, hemispherical parachute-shaped object above them about 5–10 miles away. A large black smoky region is below it, possibly obscuring the lower portion of a sphere. The UFO is darker than the 50% cloud cover and “easy to distinguish as not being cloud.” The object moves smoothly without any noticeable turn radius. Edwards puts the C-45 into a climb to 7,000 feet so they are on the same height level as the UFO and turns to head directly toward it. Army Courier Service passenger 1st Lt. John H. Van Santen is alerted by Fehrevach and also sees the object move right then left again, then they all see the object recede at high speed and disappear. About 90 seconds later the object reappears about 30°–45° to the right of their heading, then oscillates right to left. It moves horizontally to dead ahead again and disappears by receding in the distance at high speed. https://www.caelestia.be/darkblob4.html; http://www.nicap.org/500124blackstone_dir.htm

1953 January 24 — Ruppelt travels to Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs to brief the 4602nd AISS on how they might help Blue Book investigate UFOs. He also puts in for a transfer to Air Defense Command here.

1967 January 24 — 5:25 p.m. A 14-year-old boy in Yorba Linda, California, sees an object shaped like a top hat apparently hovering above houses across the street. It seems large and cylindrical, dull metallic, and has four legs. He grabs a camera and snaps a photo of the object, which has started moving away.

1974 January 24 — While the RAF rescue team is still operating around Cadair Bronwen, three family members see a bright object in the sky near the mountain. Through field glasses, they see a disc-shaped object divided into red, green, yellow, and purple sections. After 10 minutes they call the police, and the object disappears behind a cloud.

JANUARY 23rd

1947 January 23 — Night. Three senior RAF officers are visiting RAF Neatishead in Norfolk, UK, for an interception exercise when an unidentified radar target makes another appearance at 28,000 feet. RAF Mosquitos from Yorkshire are scrambled, but by the time the aircraft reach the area, the target is gone. http://www.martinshough.com/aerialphenomena/opcharlie.pdf

1948 January 23 — Col. William E. Clingerman, writing for Col. Howard McCoy at Wright Field, asks Lt. Col. George Garrett of Air Force Intelligence for all files on “Swedish incidents” in 1946 and 1947. He receives at least 44 documents, none of which have been released.

1958 January 23 — Capt. G. H. Oldenburgh, public information officer at Langley AFB, Virginia, writes to a NICAP member who has been denied a request to place an ad in the base newspaper asking for UFO reports: “I felt it would encourage Air Force personnel to violate present Air Force policy and specifically AF Regulation 200-2.”

1964 January 23 — The landing craft Loellen M. is in the Gulf of Carpentaria between Cape Grey and Groote Eylandt, Northern Territory, Australia, when a crew member notices the compass is malfunctioning (“haywire”) and the vessel is off course, He notices an odd phosphorescence in the water on the starboard side about 6 feet away from
the ship. It is a ghostly, pulsating white light that is rotating in a clockwise direction. It seems to be “miles across.” As the light wheel moves to the ship’s port side, another rotating light approaches the ship’s starboard side. This undoubtedly involves some unusual bioluminescence, but it is significant that it is the first “unknown” in the RAAF’s UFO files.

1965 January 23 — 8:40 a.m. Two separate cars driving in different direction stall out near the intersection of US Hwy 60 and State Route 614 in Lightfoot, Virginia. One of the drivers, Thomas F. Mains, sees a lightbulb or mushroom-shaped object 75–80 feet tall and 10–25 feet wide, hovering over nearby field about 4 feet off the ground. It is metallic gray, with red-orange and blue lights and is making a vacuum cleaner noise. It suddenly accelerates horizontally to the west against the wind and disappears. (http://www.nicap.org/650123williamsburg_dir.htm;

1971 January 23 — The Porto Alegre, Brazil, newspaper Correiro do Povo notes UFO sightings are recurring in a rural location close to the federal capital of Brasília. An unnamed local peasant is quoted as saying that the “state governor” shows up regularly and looks for “little stones” in the nearby woods. Always dressed in black, he arrives via an airplane “made of two dishes, like, one atop the other, and when it goes up in the air it changes color and then disappears quicker than a flash.”

1974 January 23 — 8:30 p.m. Witnesses at Llandrillo, northern Wales, see a bright object followed by a luminous tail and (according to one witness) a blinking blue light. The object is motionless for several minutes, during which time it dims then becomes very bright. It appears to crash around Cadair Bronwen mountain, east of the village. Many people hear a terrific explosion and a violent shaking of the ground recorded up to 60 miles away. Astronomers at Leicester University record at least three fireball meteors this evening. The British Geological Survey identifies the source of the explosion as an earthquake. Police and a mountain rescue team from RAF Valley in Angelsey are in the area almost immediately and cordon off access to the supposed crash site on a barren hilltop. They find no trace of a crash the next day, but a nurse on the way to the crash site after being telephoned by police headquarters is on her way up the mountain with her daughters when she sees something sitting on the ground ahead of her. It seems to be intact and is large, circular, and glowing orange. The nurse and her daughters are within a few hundred feet when police and military forces show up and clearly tell her to leave the area. Researcher Tony Dodd is reportedly approached by a retired military man using the name of “Robert Prescott” who tells him that he and some others were assigned to transport two oblong crates from the crash site to a place called Porton Down where the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory is located. They are instructed not to stop for anyone. Military personnel open the crates and Prescott sees two humanoid figures, apparently dead, about 5–6 ft tall, very thin, almost skeletal in nature with a covering skin. These are placed in decontamination suits. Other units supposedly transport live aliens from the crash site. At 10:00 p.m., a man watches a luminous sphere descend into the sea near the Dee Estuary about 25 miles north. Nick Redfern speculates that a UK version of Project Moon Dust might be in activation, which could explain reports of mystery helicopters in the area in prior weeks. Jenny Randles hears later from a former UK government official that a crashed UFO is being kept in a military base in South Wales. In May, Welsh MP Dafydd Elis-Thomas asks Defence Minister Brynmor John if any official investigation was made; John says the only official investigation was made by the RAF Valley team. National Archives files released in 2005 show that the MoD consulted the Meteorological Office and DI55, which says the meteor explanation is the likeliest. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-10863645 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Mountain_UFO_incident

1976 January 23 — 6:00–10:30 p.m. “Scores” of UFO sightings take place around Clovis, New Mexico. Town Marhsal Willie Ronquillo of Texico follows a silent object with green, yellow, and blue lights 900 feet above his car before it speeds away to the north. A police dispatcher in Artesia sees 6–7 flashing lights in the sky at 750–1,000 feet altitude. They hover for a while, then move away at high speed toward Carlsbad. Members of the UFO Study Group, composed of employees of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories, arrive in Clovis at 11:30 p.m. to investigate.

1996 January 23 — 9:00 a.m. Varghina. The creatures are delivered in a metal box punctured with holes to the University of Campinas in São Paulo where doctors Fortunato Badan Palhares and Conradín Metz begin performing autopsies. Lab workers are prevented from entering the site. According to three military sources, at least one creature is taken to underground labs located at the university. Another creature is referred to the Legal Medical Institute at the Cemitério dos Amarais in Campinas. Army officials continue making decisive movements around Campinas through April. There are rumours that metal fragments of an unknown origin are taken to the Brazilian Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia Aeroespacial in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, where they are examined in secret underground facilities. The same day, a cargo aircraft takes off from Canoas Air Force Base, Rio Grande do Sul, transporting three containers, a box, several soldiers, and a sophisticated radar system to be deployed near Varginha.

JANUARY 22nd

1855 January 22 — 10:00 p.m. A witness walking in the public square in New Haven, Connecticut, sees a brilliant red fireball in the sky near the star Gamma Draconis. At first it is stationary but after 15 seconds it moves slowly toward the east with a slight undulatory motion. It passes below the star Eta Ursae Majoris and disappears not far from Denebola in the constellation Leo. The object is visible for 10 minutes.

1878 January 22 — John Martin is out hunting near his ranch 6 miles north of Dallas, Texas, when he notices a dark object high in the southern sky. It is so bright it hurts his eyes as it moves with great speed to directly over his head. The object is “about the size of a large saucer” and looks like a large balloon. It speeds away rapidly. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/denison1878.htm ; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?

1919 January 22 — After 10:00 p.m. A brilliant light the size of a tennis ball appears in a garden at Shuttlewood, Derbyshire, UK. When the witness approaches it, it moves away at a leisurely pace and passes through wire netting. It follows the top of a hedge, turns right, and ascends until it finds a break in the high branches of a tree, where it hovers for 3 minutes before flying on. The witness then notices his neighbour’s farm is illuminated with bright white light. Several minutes later, the sphere returns to the garden, hovers another 3 minutes, then approaches the witness. As it does so, it turns from white to orange. It moves away, stops above a neighbour’s garden, travels along a hedge, traverses a field, and circles a row of houses before soaring into the sky and disappearing. The light is seen for 40 minutes.

1934 January 22 — A mystery aircraft flies over the military fortress at Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden, seen by 30 soldiers, and Reuterswärd alerts the press that planes had flown over restricted military areas.

1935 January 22 or 23 — 8:00 p.m. A woman in Vienna, Virginia, sees a lightning-like flash in the southwest that flares up several times then dies down. It seems to come from a “great blazing light, almost a ball of fire,” that is moving around the horizon. It is lost to view in the southeast.

1945 January 22 — British prisoners being force-marched out of the German Heydebreck labor camp (near modern Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland) see a four-engine bomber overhead. Behind it is a “brilliant light” that is following it closely.

1948 January 22 — Project Sign officially launches at Wright Field. The primary investigators are Capt. Robert R. Sneider (project chief), Alfred Loedding (T-3 engineer), Lawrence Truettner (T-2 engineer), and Col. Albert Deyarmond (analyst in Intelligence Analysis Division). Also involved are Maj. Raymond Llewellyn (chief of special projects branch), Lt. Howard W. Smith, George W. Towles, and others as assigned. How much interest Col. Howard McCoy takes in the project is unknown. Its task is to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute information on sightings in the atmosphere “which can be considered of concern to national security.” Ruppelt later says that to be considered an “unknown,” it has to come from a competent observer and contain a reasonable amount of data. https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sign/sign.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/waves/480122SIGNinit.htm

1950 January 22 — 2:40 a.m. Navy patrol pilot Lieut. Smith makes a routine security flight out of Naval Air Station Kodiak [now Coast Guard Base Kodiak], Alaska. He obtains a radar reading on an object 20 miles north. It quickly vanishes. At 2:48, he tracks a similar object 10 miles southeast. Kodiak radar reports no known aircraft in the vicinity, but they are seeing the same track. At 3:00 a.m., the tug USS Tillamook is south of Kodiak when one of the men on deck sees a “very fast-moving red glow light, which appeared to be of exhaust nature.” The object comes from the southeast, moves clockwise around Kodiak, and returns to the southeast. Another officer sees it for 30 seconds and describes it as a “large ball of orange fire.” At 4:40 a.m., Lieut. Smith picks up another blip moving so fast that it leaves a trail on his screen. His crew sees the UFO close a five-mile gap in 10 seconds, an apparent speed of 1,800 mph. Witnesses report two orange lights that rotate around a common center. The object makes a sharp turn and heads directly towards Smith’s plane. Smith considers this a threatening situation and turns off his lights; the UFO flies by and disappears. At least 35 copies of Smith’s report are sent to FBI, CIA, AFOSI, and the State Dept. None are ever officially released or published. http://www.nicap.org/500122kodiak_dir.htm;

1951 January 22 — 11:00 a.m. USAF pilots Capt. Ernest W. Spradley Jr. of Aerial Photo Lab and Capt. James E. Cocker of All-Weather Flying Division (both based at Wright-Patterson AFB), a General Mills Aeronautical lab project engineer named McAleese, and another airman are flying in a C-47 heading east about 50 miles southeast of Holloman AFB, New Mexico, at about 10,000–12,000 feet, tracking a Project Gopher plastic balloon at about 50,000–70,000 feet, when they see a bright star-like object adjacent to the pear-shaped balloon. As they approach and fly under the balloon, they notice the object descend to the balloon’s level and grow larger in apparent size until about one-quarter to one-half the size of the 70-foot balloon. It appears to be round and flat like a dime, milky white or silvery in color, with a clear outline. Cocker and McAleese leave the cockpit and go to the astrodome to observe the object. After 3 minutes they see the object separate from the balloon and head west at high speed. After about 1 minute it emits a series of 3 bright photoflashes at one-second intervals and disappears from sight. http://www.nicap.org/510122holloman_dir.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/510214alamogordo_dir.htm

1952 January 22 — 12:20 a.m. At a northern Alaska outpost, Murphy Dome Air Force Station, radar captures a UFO traveling 1,500 mph at 23,000 feet. When an F-94 is sent to intercept, the target stops, slows down, reverses course, and heads directly for the radar station. It comes within 30 miles, then disappears from the screen. The F-94 heads back to refuel, and a second fighter is scrambled. This pilot gets a strong radar return. At first, the object is almost stationary, but then it dives suddenly, at which point ground radar picks it up again. A third F-94 is sent up, also tracks the object on radar, and closes to within 900 feet. At this point, the pilot pulls away to avoid a collision, as the UFO is nearly immobile. Since none of the pilots obtained a visual sighting, the Air Force concludes that the radar returns are weather-related, although the pilots strongly dispute this. http://www.nicap.org/520122nenana_dir.htm

1956 January 22 — Jonathan N. Leonard reviews Harold T. Wilkins’s Flying Saucers Uncensored, Keyhoe’s Flying Saucer Conspiracy, and Ruppelt’s Report on UFOs in the New York Times. He calls Wilkins a mystic, Keyhoe “repetitious and unconvincing,” and Ruppelt (most unfairly) “the longest and dullest of the current crop of saucer books.”

1958 January 22 — The “UFO: The Enigma of the Skies” segment of Armstrong Circle Theater airs on CBS. USAF Reserve Lt. Col. Spencer Whedon from ATIC says all UFOs are explainable. Keyhoe comes on and starts reading his script for a few minutes, then shocks everyone by deviating from it, saying “And now, Mr. Edwards, I would like to make a disclosure, something which has never been revealed to the public. For the last six months our committee has been working with a Senate committee which is investigating official secrecy on UFOs. If the hearings are held, open hearings, I feel it would prove beyond doubt that flying saucers are real—”. Then his microphone is cut off, although the filming continues. Menzel then appears, then USAF spokesman Richard E. Horner comes on afterward and says that the Air Force is not hiding anything about UFOs. Keyhoe later claims this is not censorship by the show, although he thinks it is the Air Force silence group at work. In April, CBS director of editing Herbert A. Carlborg tells NICAP that Keyhoe’s deviation “might lead to statements that neither this network nor the individuals on the program were authorized to release. As a consequence, public interest was served.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOGN6h9RC0 ; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1958-Mar-Apr.pdf , p. 10–17;

1961 January 22 — 4:45 p.m. An elliptical, metallic-looking UFO approaches Eglin AFB near Valparaiso, Florida, from over the Gulf, makes a U-turn and speeds back over the Gulf. Harry Caslar is filming his son on the beach with 8mm movie film and captures the UFO.

1968 January 22 — In response to a question by MP Teddy Taylor, Secretary of State for Defense Merlyn Rees writes that the total number of reports for 1967 “reflects a wave of public interest in UFOs, reaching a peak toward the end of the year,” and that unexplained sightngs (only 46 out of 362) are due to lack of sufficient information.

1990 January 22 — 10:00 a.m. UFOs approach the Santa Cruz Air Force Base, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Air traffic controllers spot them on their radars but cannot identify them because they do not make movements like an airplane or helicopter. Interceptors approach, but the objects move away and disappear. They return about 40 minutes after the interceptors land. Two other fighters are assigned to chase the objects, which are at an altitude of 4,800 feet. The case is investigated by an internal commission of the Brazilian Air Force, which can find no explanation.

1996 January 22 —Varghina. The Brazilian military uses three trucks and several other vehicles to move the covered bodies. The trucks are parked on the side of Hospital Humanitas Unimed, and a series of cover-up operations are performed involving doctors, nurses, soldiers, firemen, and military police. The bodies inside the three trucks go to the Escola de Sargentos das Armas in Très Coracões.

1999 January 22 — Peter Gersten, executive director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, files a FOIA lawsuit in federal district court in Phoenix, Arizona, to release documents relating to the Phoenix Lights and (later) the St. Clair Triangle in Illinois in 2000. The Department of Defense files a motion to dismiss the suit. Assistant US Attorney Richard Patrick says the department has conducted a reasonable search for information requested by Gersten’s group and cannot find any records. https://culteducation.com/group/1208-the-ufo-believers/21153-ufo-lawsuit-to-get-hearing.html

1999 January 22 — 7:03 a.m. A witness driving south on State Highway 3 near the off-ramp to Naval Submarine Base Bangor [now Naval Base Kitsap] on the Kitsap Peninsula, Washington, sees an orange volleyball-sized light 20 feet above the overpass moving at 60–70 mph toward the base. http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/005/S05404.html

2004 January 22 — 9:00 p.m. S/Sgt Shawn Burke of the 86th Operations Support Squadron stationed at Ramstein Air Base outside Ramstein-Misenbach, Kaiserslautern, Germany, sees a row of seven lights directly overhead and glowing a bright white. When the clouds become thicker, the display disappears briefly, then reappears and become more elongated, looking more like lines than dots. Burke takes a few photos. They remain stationary all night. His cellphone and the internet in his building goes out when the lights get brighter. Possible light pillars. https://www.caelestia.be/ramstein.html

JANUARY 21st

1951 January 21 — 4:20 p.m. A UFO that appears to be over the restricted area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, is sighted on the radarscope of an F-82 fighter. The GCI gives the go-ahead to intercept the target. The radar set on the F-82 is locked on and the run begins. The interception is unsuccessful, and the fighter returns to base. In all, three passes are made at targets, all with radar indications, but they cannot be completed since the target is over the restricted area that includes the X-10 plant. http://www.nicap.org/510121oakridge_dir.htm

1952 January 21 — 9:50 a.m. A Navy pilot lieutenant commander in a TBM Avenger chases a white, dome-shaped object over Mitchel AFB [now closed] on Long Island, New York. It accelerates rapidly, makes a 180° turn, and heads out to sea. He estimates it is traveling at least at 300 mph. It looks like a parachute canopy and has a dark undersurface. Although there is a balloon in the area, but its flight path is completely different. http://www.nicap.org/520121mitchel_dir.htm

1957 January 21 — 10:45 a.m. Near Kagnew Station [now closed], Asmara, Eritrea, five enlisted men of the US Army’s 4th Detachment of the Second Signal Service Battalion (M/Sgt Billy J. Woodruff, Sgt. Frank Haverly, SP2 Robert O. Clewell, SP2 George R. Dean, and SP3 Gerald L. Fennell) watch a large, shiny, metal sphere hovering at about 2,000 feet. It suddenly disappears but reappears later for a few minutes, then disappears again. Later in the day, Woodruff and Capt. Jesse M. Strong see two brownish, disc-shaped objects maneuvering in formation at a high altitude. One breaks away from the other, moving at high speed.

1959 January 21 — MP Roy Mason asks the Air Minister another question in the House of Commons: What instructions have been sent to RAF stations about collecting military UFO reports, and what collaboration is there with Canada and the US? Air Minister George Ward replies that RAF units have standing instructions for handling reports, and there is no special collaboration with those countries. http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/ufologia/FSR,1959,Mar-Apr,V%205,N%202.pdf , p. 2

1970 January 21 — The UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics sponsors a panel that meets in New York City to discuss differing viewpoints on UFOs. Among the panel members are Hynek, McDonald, Thornton Page, Gordon D. Thayer, and Philip Klass. The subcommittee, led by Joachim P. Kuettner, consists of scientists with no previous position on UFOs and reaches several middle-of-the-road conclusions. It criticises the NAS position that the ETH is the least likely explanation and rejects McDonald’s position that it is the “least unsatisfactory.” It criticises the Condon report, in which the conclusions do not match the data, and recommends a moderate-level, ongoing study of UFOs.

1976 January 21 — Before 3:55 a.m. Security police see two UFOs near the flight line at Cannon AFB, southwest of Clovis, New Mexico. The objects are 75 feet in diameter, gold or silver in color, with a blue light on top, a hole in the middle, and a red light on the bottom. An Air Force officer calls the UFO Education Center in Wisconsin to report he “had a very close sighting and was able to witness a type of vehicle that did manoeuvre and that was unlike any type aircraft he has ever seen.” One observer claims to see a dozen UFOs through a Starlight Scope from the flight tower. A Clovis policeman sees a cigar-shaped object with pulsating red, white, and blue lights. (Las Cruces (N.Mex.) Sun-News, January 25, 1976, p. 1; http://www.nicap.org/760121cannondoc.htm ;

1976 January 21 — Before 3:55 a.m. Security police see two UFOs near the flight line at Cannon AFB, southwest of Clovis, New Mexico. The objects are 75 feet in diameter, gold or silver in color, with a blue light on top, a hole in the middle, and a red light on the bottom. An Air Force officer calls the UFO Education Center in Wisconsin to report he “had a very close sighting and was able to witness a type of vehicle that did manoeuvre and that was unlike any type aircraft he has ever seen.” One observer claims to see a dozen UFOs through a Starlight Scope from the flight tower. A Clovis policeman sees a cigar-shaped object with pulsating red, white, and blue lights. http://www.nicap.org/760121cannondoc.htm

1977 January 21 — 4:45 p.m. Three female factory workers in Bridlington, Yorkshire, UK, are walking to work on Bessingby Way when they see a hazy oval object hovering above the Britax PMG factory roof just before it begins moving to the right and stopping again. Almost immediately they spot another hazy object hovering above the adjacent K. B. Dixon woodyard. It begins moving forward at a slow pace then stops above a ventilation pipe in the Dixon factory wall. As it hovers the haze disappears, and the object’s features become more distinct. It is larger than a double-decker bus and shaped like a rugby ball. All three are able to see through a row of windows on the side that reveal a corridor inside. On one end is a tube-like structure or pole. Soon it moves over some community gardens and hovers briefly at about 6 feet altitude, lowers its “pole,” and appears to suck up a polythene bag. Both objects now move off to the west. The sighting duration is 5–10 minutes. The witnesses are terrified during the event, experiencing a cold sensation sweeping over them and a prickly irritation in their eyes. They develop sore throats and colds.

1977 January 21 — Night. Capt. Gustavo Ferreira and the crew of Avianca flight HK-1273 see an extremely bright white light in front of his plane. They are 7 minutes out of the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, westbound at 20,000 feet. At the same time, airport radar operator Jorge Jimenez watches a target moving at 27,340 mph in a zigzag motion. Ferreira watches the light change color in response to his turning on his landing lights and head south after 3 minutes. Jimenez sees the target cut 90° to the south at the same time.

1979 January 21 —Front-page stories of another UFO sighting in Kuwait appear the day after the committee’s report.

1984 January 21–February 26 — Project Hessdalen sets up three fieldwork stations, the primary one on Aspaskjolen mountain, and two smaller ones at Hersjøen and Litlefjellet. This group secures technical assistance from the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, the University of Oslo, and the University of Bergen. Over the course of one month, investigators see numerous lights, take photos of many of them, and track them instrumentally. On three occasions, lights are seen visually and tracked on radar simultaneously, casting a reflection on the radar screen so
strong that a Norwegian defense expert later says that if that is not a solid object, then it must be a “strongly ionized gas.” One of the lights is tracked moving at 19,000 mph. On another occasion, a light under constant visual observation shows up on radar only on every second sweep. In most instances (33 in all), when radar shows something, the eye or a camera sees nothing. On two occasions the researchers direct a laser beam on passing lights. Out of a total of nine times, the lights respond all but once in a curious way, changing from a regular flashing light to a double-flashing light. The total number of sightings in this period is 188, although some may be attributable to passing aircraft. Only four of the photos taken through the special lens grating come out well enough to show light spectra, and only two of these are useful for analysis. Changes in the magnetic field are recorded in 40% of the sightings, but the Geiger counter and infrared viewer prove unhelpful. Researchers categorize the phenomenon into three different types: a white or blue-white flashing light, high in the air; a yellow light with a red light on the top, sometimes flashing; and a slow-moving, yellow or white light that maneuvers, stops for an hour or more, and continues maneuvering. http://www.hessdalen.org/index_e.shtml; http://www.hessdalen.org/reports/hpreport84.shtml ; http://www.hessdalen.org/pictures/H-a15a19.shtml; http://www.hessdalen.org/pictures/H-a12.shtml ; http://www.hessdalen.org/pictures/description.shtml

1988 January 21 — 8:00 p.m. Ex-Navy Lt. Dan McIndoe and his family are at their home 5 miles north of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington, when they see a white light with red and blue flashes. They watch it maneuvering for 2 hours.

1996 January 21 — 2:00 a.m. Marco Eli Chareze returns home to his mother’s house to change clothes because his are drenched with rain. He begins to fall ill.

1996 January 21 — The strange creatures are transferred to Hospital Humanitas Unimed in Varginha. There are many reports of unusual movements of the Army, the police, and the fire department between the two hospitals. Vehicles are also seen arriving at a hospital in Belo Horizonte, where allegedly one of the creatures dies.

JANUARY 20

1947 January 20 — In London, Ben Lockspeiser, chief scientist for the UK Ministry of Supply, after meeting with Swedish scientists and air force authorities, informs the American naval attaché in London, Cmdr. Jenkins, that the Swedes doubt the rockets are from Russia but prefer the US and UK continue to think so. Natural phenomena and popular imagination are considered the causes. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1947-Jan-Jun-23-SN.pdf , p. 3–5

1951 January 20 — 9:20 p.m. Sioux City, Iowa, CAA Control Tower operator John M. Williams sees an odd light in the west. Capt. Lawrence W. Vinther and copilot James F. Bachmeier of Mid-Continent Airlines Flight 9 takes off and Vinther is asked by the tower to look for the light. While still in a climbing turn at about 1,000 feet, the pilots spot the object to the north-northwest at about 8,000 feet and 4 miles away. It looks like a B-29 fuselage with wings but no engines and blinks some lights like running lights. The object comes towards the DC-3, flies across the nose within 200 feet, then suddenly reappears on the other side, paralleling them for 2–3 seconds. The object then flies under them and disappears to the northwest. This is one of the first reports to make it into the CIRVIS system specified by JANAP 146. http://www.nicap.org/510120siouxcity_dir.htm ; Sparks 104; http://www.project1947.com/fig/vinther51.htm

1952 January 20 — 7:20 p.m. Two master sergeants, both intelligence specialists, are walking down a street at Fairchild AFB near Spokane, Washington, when they notice a large, bluish-white, spherical object approaching from the east. It passes north of their position, traveling horizontally and silently, and disappears in the west. They notice it has a long blue tail. It travels underneath low cloud cover at 4,700 feet at 1,400 mph.http://www.nicap.org/520120spokane_dir.htm

1976 January 20–22 — At the 13th Aerospace Sciences Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Pasadena, California, physicist Peter A. Sturrock organizes a UFO symposium that features talks by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, ufologist Jacques Vallée, psychologist David R. Saunders, Hynek associate Fred Beckman, and ufologist Ted Phillips

1979 January 20 — The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research committee releases its report on eight UFO sightings in Kuwait from November to December 14, 1978. The report rejects the idea that the UFOs are espionage devices, but it remains equivocal about whether they are extraterrestrial. The committee recommends that the government take all measures to protect the country and its oilfields. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1979KUWAIT00486_e.html

1988 January 20 — 4:10 a.m. Faye Knowles and her three sons Patrick, Sean, and Wayne are en route along the Eyre Highway from Perth, Western Australia, to Melbourne, Victoria, by car, when they observe a bright, egg-shaped object ahead of them on the road near Mundrabilla, Western Australia. Sean is driving and has to swerve to miss the object. The egg-shaped object then begins to follow their station wagon. At some point, Sean does a U-turn to approach the object, but soon goes back to driving eastward. The family becomes disoriented, and the sequence of events is difficult to reconstruct. They roll down the windows and a “grayish-black mist” enters into the car. Faye reaches out the window to touch the roof and feels something warm, soft, and rubbery that covers her hand in black dust. They hear a thud on the roof and come to believe that the object has lifted their car off the road. They are let down suddenly and the right rear tire blows out. A truck driver named Graham Henley is driving ahead of the Knowles’s car; he sees a bright light in his rearview mirror for about 5 minutes. Shortly after Henley pulls into Mundrabilla, the Knowles family arrives in a state of disorientation. He inspects the damaged tire, sees dents in the roof, and smells something burnt. Henley and another trucker drive back to the scene and find skid marks and footprints. In the afternoon, the family report to police in Ceduna, South Australia, who note their distress and the dents in the roof. Samples of the black dust are collected for forensic analysis. The police tests are never done, but at least half of the material is obtained by ufologists Keith Basterfield and Ray Brooke, who take it to a laboratory. The analysis reveals ordinary materials: sodium chloride, sodium, aluminum, magnesium, sulphur, potassium, silicon, chlorine, clay particles, and calcium. The Seven Network pays the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories to test the vehicle for radioactivity, but there is none above background. AMDEL states that the car tire has failed due to being underinflated, and the dust, smell, and smoke is due to the blowout.
Another set of samples is taken from the car by the Victorian UFO Research Society and sent to two different labs, again with commonplace results. However, one analysis by Richard Haines in the US concludes that the interior dust is different from the exterior dust, which contains a possible trace of astatine, a radioactive chemical element. Faye’s hand became red and swollen in the days after the event. http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1090.htm ; http://www.strangedayz.co.uk/2007/09/ufos-on-nullarbor-plain.html ; http://www.strangedayz.co.uk/2007/09/ufos-on-nullarbor-plain-part-2.html

1990 January 20 — 1:15–1:20 a.m. A silvery dome-shaped object with two rows of lights flies just ahead of a car for two to three miles on Highway 446 at Boyle, Mississippi. The engine and lights fail until the object departs.

1996 January 20 — 8:00 a.m. The Varginha fire department receives a call from someone who asks them to investigate a strange creature seen in a park north of the Jardim Andere neighborhood. At 10:00 a.m., firefighters arrive expecting to find a wild animal, but they encounter a 5-foot-tall bipedal entity with red eyes and brown skin. Fish peddler João Bosco Manoel comes across firefighters Sgt. Palhares, Cpl. Rubens, and soldiers Santos and Nivaldo, who are carrying a net with a strange being inside it. One of its feet is brown, and the firefighters are trying to conceal it from curious onlookers. A smell of ammonia permeates the scene.

1996 January 20 — Afternoon. According to testimony by an ex-soldier, uniformed military men open fire while they are sweeping the small forest where the creature had been found earlier. A soldier becomes frightened when he sees a creature apparently helping a wounded comrade. Two shots strike its belly and one its chest. A fourth shot hits its shoulder. These two creatures differ from the earlier one and have black hair. Immediately afterward, soldiers come out of the woods carrying the creatures in two black sacks. Something is moving in one of them.

1996 January 20 —3:30 p.m. Sisters Liliane Fátima da Silva, 16, and Valquíria Aparecida da Silva, 14, and their friend Kátia Andrade Xavier, 22, are crossing a vacant lot at Rua Dr. Benevenuto Bráz Viêrira in the Santana neighborhood of Varginha, Brazil, when they encounter a thin, hairless, dark-skinned creature with dark veins, two legs with enormous two-toed feet, two arms with only three fingers, a huge head two three bony protrusions (one on each side and one in the center), and huge red eyes crouching beside a wall. At first they think it is a statue, but then it turns its head and they think it is a devil. They run home and call their mother, Luzia Helena da Silva, but when they return to the vacant lot, all they find is two footprints and an awful stench. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_de_Varginha ; http://g1.globo.com/mg/sul-de-minas/noticia/2016/01/et-de-varginha-caso-completa-20-anos-com-misterios-e-incertezas.html

1996 January 20 — Around 6:00 p.m. After a hailstorm halts the search for several hours, the Varginha search units venture back into the woods. Two plainclothes officers of the Military Police Intelligence Service, one of them Marco Eli Chereze, locate and capture a fourth creature, forcing it into the back of their car. They bring it to a health clinic but are turned away, so they take it to the Hospital Regional do Sul de Minas, where the first examinations are performed.

2004 January 20 — European Parliament Member Nello Musumeci submits a proposal to create a Europe-wide “body for the study of unexplained atmospheric phenomena.” He suggests that the European Commission should pay special attention to UFO studies by various European space centers and recommends SEPRA in Toulouse, France, as a model.

JANUARY 19

1961 January 19 — A USAF press release proclaims that “not even a minute fragment of a so-called ‘flying saucer’ has ever been found.”

1965 January 19 — NICAP Acting Director Richard H. Hall meets with a CIA agent and passes on some UFO case information and other materials to OSI for preparation of a paper on UFOs. Hall is given a direct phone number for the agent’s office. He uses the phone line only once to “report some high-quality UFO sightings to the CIA.” He is also given a CIA security clearance without his consent or knowledge. A January 25 CIA memo confirming the meeting shows an inordinate amount of interest in NICAP, given the CIA’s mandate for acquiring foreign intelligence.

1965 January 19 — Hall also meets for 90 minutes with retired Navy Capt. John Lawrence Counihan who is on the staff of Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Counihan says that the Committee on Astronautics and Space Science would be considered “nutty” if it took up hearings, but it might be willing to consider an informal briefing by NICAP.

1965 January 19 — 6:15 p.m. William Blackburn, a draftsman at a General Electric plant, is chopping wood at an archery range east of Staunton, Virginia, in an area known locally as Brands Flats. He sees two saucer-like shapes in the sky at 2,000–4,000 feet altitude. The larger one seems to be about 80 feet across. The smaller one, 20 feet across, descends quickly and silently and lands 45–55 feet away from Blackburn. A door opens, making a slight noise and revealing an interior light. Three figures, each 3 feet tall and wearing tight-fitting metallic-looking suits, emerge. They have reddish-orange skin and piercing eyes. One has an extra-long finger on its left hand. They speak in an unintelligible language, then return to the UFO. The door closes so perfectly that an outline cannot be seen, and the object takes off. The entire episode lasts only 5 minutes. Blackburn sees no traces in the snow, but thinks the object and humanoids are hovering. http://www.nicap.org/650119brandsflats_dir.htm

1966 January 19 — Around 9:00 a.m. A banana grower, George Pedley, is driving a tractor about one half mile from a farmhouse at Tully, Queensland, Australia, owned by Albert Pennisi. Pedley’s attention is drawn by a hissing sound, clearly heard over the noise from the tractor’s engine. He looks about for the source of the noise and sees an unusual object about 75 feet away. It is some 30 feet in the air, rising vertically, and is shaped like “two saucers face to face.” It is light gray in color, dull, and non-reflective. He estimates its size as 25 feet long by 8–9 feet deep. The hissing diminishes as the object rises to a height of 60 feet, then departs, climbing at about an angle of 45°, extremely fast, to the southwest. The duration of his observation is only 5–6 seconds. The object appears to be always rotating. After its departure, Pedley finds a clearly defined, nearly circular depression in swamp grass, in a water-filled lagoon, at the point where he first saw it. The marking is about 32 feet long by 25 feet wide. The grass on the surface of the water is flattened in a clockwise direction. Royal Australian Air Force intelligence officers find a variety of circles in the area, ranging from 8 to 30 feet in diameter. Within each circle the plant roots are pulled completely out of the soil, as if the ground has been subjected to an intense rotary force. http://www.project1947.com/forum/bctully.htm

1978 January 19 — Citizens Against UFO Secrecy files a request with the US State Department for classified UFO documents and includes the date and time information, transmittal numbers, and message serial numbers, but the department replies that it cannot locate the specified information.

JANUARY 18th

1946 January 18 — 11:00 p.m. A US C-54 transport plane is at 7,000 feet over the French countryside on its way to Paris. Suddenly the pilot sees a brilliant “shooting star” about 35° above the horizon. It streaks down below the eastern horizon, then reappears and moves in a hyperbola before falling again. https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1946-The-Ghost-Rockets.pdf , p. 1

1954 January 18 — Cosette Weiss of Las Cruces is visiting the Kilbourne Hole, a maar volcanic crater in the Potrillo Volcanic Field of southern New Mexico, to collect gemstones with a companion, Mrs. Sanders. They discover 25–30 disc-shaped tracks in the sand. The largest are about 2 feet in diameter, perfectly round, and consist of four concentric rings. They find more fresh tracks on January 22. Sanders reports this to White Sands Proving Grounds. Two Army security agents, Capt. Ross Orcutt and CID agent Henry Herman, spend the night of February 6 at the location and report that the tracks are “nothing more than a combination of wind, sand, and roots.” The mystery lights seen in the area by Weiss are labelled “vehicular traffic.”

1954 January 18 — 1:30 p.m. Many people in Saint-Arnaud [now El Eulma], Algeria, observe an object that leaves a double trail of white smoke, making an immense circle over the town. Several officers at Bordj de la Remonte fort (southwest of Magra) hear the object make a strange sound. It seems to arrive from the north. A meteorological station near Oued Hmimim (southeast of Constantine) observes a double trail of smoke at 2:00 p.m., but it concludes that the smoke comes from a plane flying at great altitude. At 2:30 p.m., inhabitants of Sétif see an object arrive from the east, emitting bluish smoke trails and moving relatively slowly. After circling above the town for several seconds, it suddenly heads back in the direction of Saint-Arnaud at great speed. Witnesses describe it as it being cigar-shaped and flying at high altitude. Finally, at 4:45 p.m., a large, luminous, rectangular-shaped object is seen over Ouled Djellal (125 miles southwest of Sétif) for over 30 minutes following a rectilinear course. The object comes from the east and disappears toward the west.

1959 January 18? — Eight people see a UFO over Stigsjö, Sweden. The round object, 18–24 feet in diameter, approaches slowly from the south over Lake Länsjön at a height of 900 feet. It is surrounded by a luminous ring 6 feet wide. It is visible for 3 minutes. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1959-Jan-Mar.pdf , p. 25

1966 January 18 — 4:55 p.m. Two surveyors are taking readings at China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station [now Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake] in California. The surveyor using a theodolite hears a hum, looks up, and sees a UFO flying nearly straight at him from an angle of 35°–40° and from almost exact north. It passes directly overhead at less than 150 feet, then dives smoothly, turns to the east, then comes to within 10 feet of the sloping ground. The surveyor observes the object through the theodolite until it is lost in front of a lava flow about 2 miles away. Both observers (the other one is in a truck) say it is moving at 150mph, and it is a dull black color and very quiet. They attempt to report the sighting, but the radio is garbled. Their truck has difficulty starting, and the theodolite exhibits an odd change in the gravity reference indicator, requiring it to be re-levelled.

1974 January 18 — 4:30 p.m. Giuseppe Cardelli is driving between Milan and Bologna, Italy, when he sees a “strange shining ball” in the sky. He stops his car, gets out, and photographs it. He submits the photo to NASA, which replies on June 18 that it has no explanation. A consultant wonders whether the photo shows a reflection in the car window and finds the “wiggly clouds to the right” interesting.

1978 January 18 — 3:00–5:00 a.m. A security policeman at McGuire AFB [now Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst] in Burlington County, New Jersey, is called to help investigate a low-flying UFO over the neighbouring Fort Dix army base. An Army MP pursues the object, but his radio transmission is cut off just as a grayish, 4-foot-tall being with fat head, long arms, and a slender body appears in front of his car. The MP fires five rounds into the being and one round into the object above. The UFO shoots upward and joins 11 others high in the sky, and the being runs into the woods toward the Fort Dix fence line. A security patrol finds its dead body near the McGuire AFB runaway, giving out a foul, ammonia-like stench; then AFOSI arrives and ropes everything off. Retired USAF Maj. George Filer III, who later serves as MUFON New Jersey director, asserts that he was stationed on the base at the time and that the story is true, although he did not see the alien. http://www.nicap.org/reports/fortdixSYM.htm

1979 January 18 — 7:07 p.m. Brinsley Le Poer Trench, Lord Clancarty, has put down a motion for debate in the House of Lords on the official policy of the UK government on UFOs. He begins the debate by launching into a history of UFOs and stresses the international character of the phenomenon. He concludes with a request for the Minister of Defence to be interviewed on national TV. Lord Trefgarne rejects the proposal on the grounds that there are many things that can masquerade as UFOs, plus the Bible has nothing to say about extraterrestrials. Lord Kimberley agrees that a parliamentary group should be set up. Lord Oxford and Lord Davies agree there should be future investigations to settle the question. The Bishop of Norwich expresses concern that a UFO cult could compete with Christianity. Lord Gladwyn deems the evidence inconclusive, but Lord Kings Norton favours an investigation. Lord Rankeillour states emphatically that UFOs exist, and they might be dangerous. Lord Gainford relates a personal sighting of a nocturnal light over Argyll, Scotland, the previous December 31. The Earl of Halsbury provides a list of natural causes for UFOs, and Lord Hewlett paraphrases debunking arguments. The Earl of Cork and Orrery lashes out at Trefgarne’s skepticism. Lord Strabolgi firmly rejects the request for an official investigation on the grounds that all UFO reports can be explained conventionally. Clancarty winds it up by saying, “Nothing is impossible in this world or this universe. It is just that the seemingly impossible takes a little time to come about.” https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1979/jan/18/unidentified-flying-objects

JANUARY 17th

1913 January 17 — 4:45 p.m. Capt. Lionel Lindsay, chief constable of Glamorganshire, watches a large, fast-moving object above Cardiff, Wales, leaving in its wake a dense volume of smoke. Other witnesses see the light moving west from Cardiff at considerable speed.

1947 January 17 — 11:37 p.m. After two unidentified targets similar to yesterday’s are reported by RAF Neatishead, northeast of Norwich, UK, over the North Sea, another radar track enters the Eastern Sector area, and an RAF Mosquito piloted by Flight Lt. William Kent is scrambled to 18,000 feet. Kent attempts to close in, but his onboard radar is unable to keep it on track because the target is “jerking violently” and taking evasive action. After 20 minutes, the target descends below 2,000 feet and is lost from ground radar. Unofficially the radar operators give the intruder a name—Charlie—and when the Air Ministry later begins a concerted effort to solve the mystery, its code name is “Operation Charlie.”

1953 January 17 — The final day of the Robertson Panel. The panel reviews Robertson’s draft report (Berkner has already seen it) and puts it into final form. (By 11:00 a.m., both CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith and Gen. John A. Samford have seen and approved the draft.) The scientists agree that since most sightings can be explained, the rest can be accounted for with further investigation, which is a “great waste of effort.” They reject Fournet’s UFO reports as “raw” and “unevaluated.” The Montana film is said to depict aircraft. They reject the Navy analysis of the Utah film, calling the objects “high reflectivity of seagulls in bright sunlight.” Because the “mass receipt of low-grade reports [tends] to overload channels of communication with material quite irrelevant to hostile objects that might some day appear” (a phony issue invented by Thornton Page), the Air Force should embark on a debunking campaign that would “result in reduction of public interest in flying saucers” with the help of scientific pronouncements (suggested by Hynek) and media, including Walt Disney Inc. animated cartoons. Blue Book should be expanded to 18 staff members (it has 5) so that it can educate and debunk effectively, but this never happens. Civilian UFO groups such as CSI and APRO should be watched “because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.” The panel and report are kept classified until a brief summary is declassified in 1958, and the CIA’s involvement is kept secret until 1966. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79B00752A000300100010-4.pdf ; http://www.nicap.org/docs/530114-18_Robertson_Panel_Convenes.pdf ; ; http://ufxufo.org/robertson/durantrept.htm

1953 January 17 — 3:55 p.m. Geologist/salesman John Townsend Sackett is riding in a bus with about a dozen passengers near Guatemala City, Guatemala, when he observes a brilliant greenish-gold object, shaped like the Goodyear blimp. It is later described as being about twice the size of a DC-3. The object is traveling at about 400 mph straight and level in a north-westerly direction at about 6,500 feet. It almost stops in mid-flight then rises vertically about 1,500 feet, hovers for about 2 seconds, then immediately resumes flight at a new altitude. The object is lost to view because of intervening terrain. http://www.nicap.org/530117guatemala_dir.htm ;

1959 January 17 — George Adamski arrives in Auckland, New Zealand, on the first stop on his world lecture tour where he is received by North Island Adamski Correspondence Group leaders Henk and Brenda Hinfelaar for a 6-week engagement starting with a talk in Kaikohe on January 20. https://www.the-adamski-case.nl/his-mission/global-reach/world-tour/

1961 January 17 — DRC Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is executed by firing squad near Élisabethville [now Lubumbashi], Democratic Republic of the Congo. CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin has helped direct the search to capture Lumumba for his transfer to his enemies in Katanga, he is involved in arranging Lumumba’s transfer there, and he is in direct touch with the killers the night Lumumba is killed. The Congolese leaders who kill Lumumba, including Mobutu Sese Seko and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, receive money and weapons directly from the CIA. John Stockwell writes in 1978 that a CIA agent had the body in the trunk of his car in order to try to get rid of it. Stockwell, who knows Devlin well, feels Devlin knows more than anyone else about the murder. However, documents released in 2017 reveal that the US role in Lumumba’s murder was only under consideration by the CIA and never carried out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba#United_States_involvement

1961 January 17 — Eisenhower delivers a farewell address in a TV broadcast. Perhaps best known for advocating that the nation guard against the potential influence of the military–industrial complex, a term he is credited with coining, the speech also expresses concerns about planning for the future and the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending, the prospect of the domination of science through federal funding, and, conversely, the domination of science-based public policy by what he calls a “scientific-technological elite.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address

1963 January 17 — A formation of objects passes over Entre Ríos province, Argentina, and discharges angel hair. Vitreous particles are recovered, which consist of an “amalgam of silicon, boron, calcium, and magnesium.”

1978 January 17 — As a response to Sturrock’s letter, NASA astrophysicist Richard C. Henry writes to Noel Hinners suggesting that examination of any UFO evidence could be assigned to the Astrophysics Division at Goddard Space Flight Center managed by Program Scientist Frank Martin. He suggests as project scientist Stephen P. Maran at Goddard. Henry gets no response.

1980 January 17 — 10:30 p.m. Chilean astronomer Fernando Noël is at his home in the eastern suburbs of Santiago, Chile, when he sees a luminous point of light at 20° elevation moving from southwest to west. It is silent and resembles a satellite. He calls two other witnesses, during which time the object disappears. At 10:45 p.m., he sees a bright light moving slowly toward the zenith. Looking more closely, he sees it is actually a group of 30 objects in a V-formation. Each individual light of the group is pale white with a slight tint of yellow. The formation moves from 20° above the western horizon to about 20° above the eastern horizon before disappearing gradually. The duration is approximately 2 minutes. “Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena Observed by an Astronomer,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 7, no. 4 (1993): 439–441; https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/volume-7-number-4-1993

2004 January 17 — 7:45 p.m. A witness at Bass River, New Brunswick, sees a bright, fast-moving fireball. Around 11:00 p.m., a couple near Saint-Louis-de-Kent, New Brunswick, watch two flashing lights low in the west. They descend rapidly then fly in front of the witnesses at tremendous speed. They then stop and settle above some trees on the eastern horizon and disappear. A man in Caraquet is looking south and sees two objects, one on top of the other, flying west to east. They take 5 minutes to cross the sky but do not look like airplanes. In Moncton, another witness sees a single light moving steadily and rapidly across the ocean toward the east. In Saint Paul, another witness sees two lights heading toward the northwest, They make no sound, rotate around each other, hover, then leave at high speed.

JANUARY 16th

1945 January 16 —Lt. Col. Leavitt Corning Jr. of the XII Tactical Air Command sends a secret memo to the assistant chief of air intelligence requesting further information on the “Night Phenomenon.”

1947 January 16 —11:30 p.m. An RAF Mosquito plane chases an unidentified target detected on radar at RAF Trimley Heath Radar Station [now closed] near Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK, moving at a speed calculated to be faster than sound at an altitude of 38,000 feet over the North Sea, 50 miles north of the Holland coast. It descends to 17,000 feet and takes controlled, evasive action. The plane pursues it for 40 minutes, even though the pilot cannot see it visually, until he loses it over the Norfolk coast.

1950 January 16 — The AFOSI office at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska, sends a message that recounts stories from Denver about crashed saucers in the southwest. The metal allegedly “defied analysis.” Bodies are said to be 3 feet tall.

1951 January 16 — Raymond Dugan and Raymond E. Stiles, members of the General Mills Aeronautical Research Laboratory balloon project, observe a round disc near their Skyhook balloon over Artesia, New Mexico. The balloon is at a height of 112,000 feet. A short time later, Dugan, Stiles, and four civilian pilots at Artesia Airport see two similar objects circling the same balloon that then fly off to the northeast. http://www.nicap.org/docs/510116artesia_docs.pdf ; http://www.nicap.org/510116artesia_dir.htm

1953 January 16 — The third day of the Robertson Panel. Hynek speaks again, followed by Maj. Dewey Fournet, who talks about his motion studies of UFOs that indicate controlled flight. Physicist Lloyd Berkner joins the panel in the afternoon. In the afternoon, panel members talk about conclusions they have reached, and Robertson agrees to draft a report for review (although it has already been written by Durant prior to the meetings, which Fournet has suspected).

1957 January 16 — 8:00 p.m. The crews of two Air Force B-25s are flying about 90 miles north of Sweetwater, Texas, when they see a round white object make rapid maneuvers. Pilot Lt. Col. Howard T. Wright notes that his radio compass starts pointing directly toward the object, following its movements. The entire object begins blinking on and off. When the aircraft gets within range of Lubbock, Texas, the object flies off on a straight-line course in about 12 seconds. One of the B-25s refuels and is sent on a 4-hour search of the vicinity with no results. http://www.nicap.org/570116ftworth_dir.htm

1958 January 16 — Around 12:00 noon. As the International Geophysical Year research ship Almirante Saldanha is anchored on the south side of Ilha da Trindade, 730 miles off the Brazilian coast in the Atlantic Ocean, the commander and many crew members, including photographer Almiro Baraúna, see a Saturn-shaped object maneuvering over the island. It reportedly comes toward the island from the east, flies towards the Pico Desejado, makes a steep turn, and goes away very quickly to the northwest. Baraúna takes four photos with a Rolleiflex 2.8 model E. Commander Paulo Moreira da Silva of the Brazilian Navy Hydrography and Navigation Department (who technically outranks the ship’s captain, José Santos de Saldanha da Gama), is apparently an eyewitness and states, “the object was encircled by a greenish glow, our [meteorological] balloon was of a red color.” Baraúna is officially there to take photos of the island, underwater photos, photos of the IGY activities, and the ship’s operations. The radar detection of an unexplained supersonic target reportedly occurs the day before, at about 12:05 p.m. There is a power failure on the ship when the object is seen; the power returns upon the object’s departure. Instruments like radio transmitters and apparatus with magnetic needles cease operating while the flying object remains in the island’s proximity. Willy Smith’s April 20, 1983, interview of Baraúna takes on more significance: “I asked if the object had been detected by ship’s radar. He [Baraúna] replied that it hadn’t because all the electrical power aboard ship was out at the time. He was sure of the reality of the power outage because just before the object appeared a launch was being hauled up from the water by electric pulley, and it stopped midway just as the UFO appeared!” The ship’s log is provably incomplete since it does not even mention the UFO photo incident. A 1999 analysis by Martin J. Powell seems to indicate that the object photographed is an airplane, distorted by Baraúna through a double-exposure process. In August 2010, a major TV show in Brazil airs information stating that the original photographer had made hoax photographs in the past. http://www.nicap.org/580116trindade_dir.htm ; http://www.aenigmatis.com/trindade-island-ufo-1958/trindade.htm ; http://www.ufo.com.br/noticias/documento-raro-sobre-o-caso-trindade-ressurge-no-exterior/ ; http://www.nicap.org/trindade/cufos_pages/baraunaIUR.htm ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trindade_Island_UFO ;

1979 January 16 — Gen. Emiliano Alfaro Arregui, chief of staff of the Spanish Air Force, writes to the Ministry of Defense to say that whenever a UFO sighting is reported to the authorities, an Informing Judge is appointed by the corresponding Air Region to proceed with a proper investigation. Some reports are caused by natural phenomena, while others are unidentified.

JANUARY 15th

1943 January 15 — During a US bombing raid over Cherbourg, Manche, France, several crews see “large numbers of projectiles resembling ‘schools of flying fish,’ about a foot long and similar to incendiary bombs, coming up from a direction of the town.”

1953 January 15 — The second day of the Robertson Panel. Ruppelt completes his presentation, then Hynek discusses Battelle’s Project Stork. The CIA shows a film of seagulls in flight. Lt. Col. Oder gives a 40-minute presentation on Project Twinkle. In the afternoon, Gen. William M. Garland states his desire to increase the use of thoroughly briefed USAF intelligence officers to investigate UFO reports, declassify as many reports as possible, and enlarge Blue Book. Other USAF representatives discuss the difficulties of setting up instrument watches to monitor sightings.

1967 January 15 — 5:45 p.m. Helen Godard and her two nieces see a domed disc with white light emanating from portholes in its base in Granville, Massachusetts. They hear a humming sound, and the sky and ground are illuminated by white light. Red flame jets appear at one end when the object moves. Speed is variable. At one point, all the lights go out, and when they come back on the portholes are showing red light. The object is seen three times within 20 minutes before it disappears over a mountain to the east.

1982 January 15 — 7:05–11:35 p.m. Three sightings occur one after the other in Turkey. An object resembling a tray is seen at 7:05 p.m. over Niğde in central Anatolia. At 9:35 p.m., two UFOs are reported at Havsa, Edirne, accompanied by reported malfunctioning TV sets in the town. Around 11:30 p.m., a reported UFO causes the citizens of İzmir, western Anatolia, to panic. When the UFO hovers above the Buca forest it takes on a flaming appearance, causing fire brigades to rush to the scene, keeping watch over the object for 45 minutes until it vanishes.

1987 January 15–16 — 8:00 p.m. Police officer Glen Kazmar and Jeff Furseth watch a triangular configuration of red, white, and blue blinking lights that remain stationary in the southwestern sky over Belleville, Wisconsin. At 2:50 a.m., they are driving along Quarry Road west of town and see a “close-knit cluster of red, blue, and white lights.” After 15 minutes, they alert the Dane County Sheriff and are soon joined by a deputy from Verona and two Green County sheriff’s deputies, all of whom leave after debating what to do about reporting the lights. At 3:20 a.m., Kazmar and Furseth see the object move to the southwest. They call the FAA Center in Aurora, Illinois, which admits it has a slow-moving target in the area that won’t respond. Other witnesses near Monroe, New Glarus, and Verona also see lights. https://ufodays.net/2019/08/13/the-other-ufo-days-belleville-wi/ ; http://ufowisconsin.com/county/reports/r1987_bell_dane.html

1992 January 15 — The Spanish Air Force transfers responsibility for handling UFO reports to the Air Operative Command (whose head is Gen. Alfredo Chamorro Chapinal) at Torrejón Air Base in Madrid, which updates the procedures for reporting and investigating UFO sightings by military personnel. The added responsibility is placed in the intelligence section, commanded by Lt. Col. Ángel Bastida.

JANUARY 14

1910 January 14 — 6:55 p.m. Two men on Summit Hill in Knoxville, Tennessee, see a large airship moving south. Its outlines are distinct. The men hear a hum of machinery and see sparks from “its motors.”

1953 January 14 — 9:30 a.m. The opening meeting of the Robertson Panel convenes in the OSI conference room at CIA Building “M” in Washington, D.C. Present are scientists Howard P. Robertson, Samuel A. Goudsmit, Luis Walter Alvarez, and Thornton Leigh Page. CIA members Philip Grandin Strong, Lt. Col. Frederick C. E. Oder, David B. Stevenson, and Frederick C. Durant are also present. All are skeptical, if not openly hostile to UFO reports. Page later says that “H. P. Robertson told us in the first private (no outsiders) session that our job was to reduce public concern and show that UFO reports could be explained by conventional reasoning.” The panel first reviews the CIA OSI study from August, the ATIC November 21 meeting, the December 4 IAC decision, the visit to ATIC by Chadwell and Robertson, and CIA concern over potential national security dangers. They watch the Montana and Utah films. Lt. Robert S. Neasham and Harry Woo of the Navy Photo Interpretation Laboratory report on their analyses of both films, which conclude that the objects are unidentified. Ruppelt speaks for 40 minutes on the Blue Book method of UFO investigation. It is possibly here that he first suggests using 4602nd AISS field units to conduct Blue Book field investigations. The meeting adjourns at 5:15 p.m. http://ufxufo.org/robertson/durantrept.htm

1955 January 14 — 5:30 p.m. A luminous UFO drops from the sky near Idyllwild, California. Immediately afterwards, a B-47 pilot reports to March AFB [now March Air Reserve Base] near Riverside, California, that an “unknown object just hit our wing.” The pilot guides the plane to a landing. No trace of a crashed object can be found.

1957 January 14–16 — T. Townsend Brown has proven so financially inept that the NICAP board asks him to step down. Delmer S. Fahrney replaces him as board chairman, Keyhoe steps in as director, and Fahrney convenes a press conference in which he announces that UFOs are under intelligent control, but that they are not American or Soviet aircraft. Stringfield is made public relations adviser. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1957-Jan-Mar-22.pdf , p. 14–20; http://www.nicap.org/docs/nyt17Jan1957.htm ;

1965 January 14 — Around 12:00 midnight. James Myers sees a bright, silvery, circular object rise from the ground near Norfolk, Virginia.

1983 January 14 — 7:53 p.m. A bright object appears in the sky above Adana, Turkey, and many people stop their cars to look at it. Soon the object is joined by two US Air Force jets from Incirlik Air Base. One of the jets flies in tight circles around the UFO, which dwarfs it in size and is described as a disc with a dome on the underside. The object accelerates and disappears over the Mediterranean Sea with the jets in pursuit. Only one jet returns to base, although the other could have been lost during an unrelated search-and-rescue mission.

2001 January 14 — Late afternoon. Witnesses on both sides of the hill see a small object appear to strike the telecommunications mast on top of Snaefell, Isle of Man, UK. Two women on horseback see a 20-foot-long object that crashes in a shower of sparks and smoke. The emergency services think a small plane has crashed, because they have lost power and are using a backup generator. As light fades, however, helicopter crews can see damage to the mast, but no sign of wreckage. The UK government blames a model aircraft.

JANUARY 13

1949 January 13 — Col. Eustis L. Poland of US Army Intelligence (G-2) sends a memo on behalf of the Commander of Fourth Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to the Director of Army Intelligence concerning the green fireballs. It recommends a scientific study because “these incidents are of such great importance, especially as they are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive installations.” http://www.project1947.com/gfb/poland.htm

1954 January 13 — Mutual Radio broadcaster Frank Edwards alleges on his show that the wreckage of a flying saucer is being held in a “West Coast military field.” (Clark III 330–331) January 13–16 — Gen. Woodbury M. Burgess chairs a conference at Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs with 4602nd officers Capt. Joseph A. Cybulski and Capt. Bellovin and emphasizes that it is now the agency responsible to ATIC for investigating UFOs. Cybulski says that “We here in Headquarters will keep a complete file on all the sightings. That’s why we want the information copied. We will file them under separate headings, such as the type of personnel involved, military or civilian, or air-lines. We will record it under the type of object it was eventually determined to be.” Capt. Cybulski leaves for Dayton the next day to coordinate activities more closely. He reports that Hynek is “ready to quit” because he is “ridiculed by members of my profession for chasing these imaginary objects.” But Burgess persuades him to stay.

1956 January 13 — UFO researcher Morris K. Jessup receives a letter from someone in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, who calls himself Carlos Miguel Allende [a pseudonym of Carl Allen], who alludes to a US Navy experiment to make a destroyer invisible in October 1943 [the bogus Philadelphia Experiment]. He writes another letter postmarked May 25 that suggests hypnosis or truth serum might bring out more details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment#Origins_of_the_story ; https://www.de173.com/carl-allen/

1958 January 13 — 11:45 p.m. Brian Crittenden sees a dome-shaped light with a long narrow light underneath coming directly towards him as he is leaving a friend’s house southwest of Casino, New South Wales, Australia. He jumps into his car and heads home. The UFO chases his car along Benns Road, practically touching the telephone poles. His car radio develops interference when the UFO approaches him. It follows him all the way to town, 7 miles away. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1958-Jan-Feb.pdf , p. 21

1967 January 13 — Condon and Low visit Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD’s underground Space Defense Center complex, for a “classified briefing” by orbital analysts 1st Lt. Henry B. Eckert Jr. and Capt. Dick A. Cable of the 9th Aerospace Defense Division’s 1st Aerospace Control Squadron about NORAD’s radar network, hours after another classified briefing for Condon and staff at Boulder concludes. The Cheyenne Mountain briefing is the first in a series of tactical moves designed to discourage Condon’s project staff, Hynek, and McDonald from using NORAD as a source of UFO data or resource for future investigations or instrumentation.

1967January 13 — Early morning. Sgt. Norman Finley of the Joplin, Missouri, police alerts fellow officers about an unexplained object overhead. Pittsburg, Kansas, police dispatcher James Cunningham notifies the Joplin police that a UFO has been seen over Pittsburg. He describes it as an object with bright colors of “vivid blue-green with flashing lights.” Cunningham alerts the Joplin station because the object seems to be leaving Kansas and heading for Missouri. After receiving that call, Joplin’s Lt. Charles Hickman drives to Stone’s Corner near the Joplin airport. He waits for nearly an hour before spotting a UFO in the sky, which he watches for more than an hour. It is about 1,000 feet high and seems about as big as two houses. It makes turns and maneuvers “as if it were being controlled.” For the next three days, there are more sightings in the early morning hours at Coffeyville, Kansas; Joplin, Springfield, and Newton County, Missouri; and northeast Oklahoma. https://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/brad-belk-a-case-of-ufo-ping-pong/article_51a41754-7863-5c82-8818-a2c4d5b02555.html

1985 January 13–27 — Project Hessdalen II is launched to study the recurring lights of Hessdalen, Norway, with the participation of J. Allen Hynek, who arrives on January 26, but little light activity is noted. The phenomenon ceases in 1986. Investigators disagree on what the Hessdalen lights are. Odd-Gunnar Røed thinks they have some complex natural cause. Erling Strand finds it odd that the lights are so localized in time and space and must be an unknown phenomenon. Paul Devereux is convinced that they are earthquake lights resulting from seismic activity (even though the seismograph recorded no tremors). University of Oslo physicist Elvand Thrane says the lights remain a mystery. http://www.hessdalen.org/press/journals/ufoforschung-6-1986.pdf

1996 January 13 — Oralina Augusta de Freitas is watching TV in her home near Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil, when she sees a UFO hovering over the cattle, which are agitated. She calls her husband, Eurico Rodrigues, and they watch the object, which is the size of a microbus and the shape of a submarine. For 40 minutes the object flies less than 20 feet above the ground, heading toward town. The object has a hole in its structure through which white smoke is billowing. Pieces of its fuselage sway in the wind. http://g1.globo.com/mg/sul-de-minas/noticia/2016/01/et-de-varginha-caso-completa-20-anos-com-misterios-e-incertezas.html

1996 January 13 — 4:00 a.m. Businessman and pilot Carlos de Souza is driving from Très Coracões to Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil, along Highway 491. About 3 miles from Varginha, he hears a sound like an engine rumbling, so he stops by the side of the road and gets out of his vehicle. He sees a cylindrical airship 33–40 feet long and 13–16 feet in diameter flying about 395 feet above him toward Varginha. It is metallic, polished, and reflects the morning sunlight. He notices a hole in the right side of the ship and white smoke pouring out. After it crosses the highway, de Souza gets into his car and starts chasing it. When it crashes into the woods, he finds a dirt road that leads him to the scene, which is covered with debris that looks like tinfoil. He picks up a larger piece that is thin and light. When he kneads it, he is amazed to see that it returns to its original state. Further away, he sees an Army helicopter, two tarpaulins, an ambulance, and three cars. He smells a powerful ammonia odour and is startled by a military police officer who approaches him and shouts, “Go away, you saw nothing.” Two more soldiers appear and force him to leave, so he returns to his car, drives away, and stops at a restaurant. A man approaches him and asks if he is Carlos de Souza, He replies yes, and the man calls him over and says, “What you saw, I saw too. You should not talk to anyone about it.” The man then relates details about de Souza’s private life. Meanwhile, two soldiers from the Escola de Sargentos das Armas in Très Coracões contact ufologists Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues and Claudeir Covo about the incident to tell them that the area has been cordoned off and that trucks are loading odd material. There are rumours that NORAD has alerted the Brazilian authorities that it has tracked a large number of UFOs over the western hemisphere and that one has penetrated Brazilian airspace. http://g1.globo.com/mg/sul-de-minas/noticia/2016/01/et-de-varginha-caso-completa-20-anos-com-misterios-e-incertezas.html ; https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_de_Varginha

1997 January 13 — Morning. A woman driving on Highway 1 from Abbotsford to Chilliwack, British Columbia, notices a fluffy cloud in a clear sky that “bursts downward” with a bright white light three times in succession. It dissipates, leaving behind a black bar. After 5 minutes, a solid stream of white light comes downward from it and another black bar appears, about 45° below the first one. They both start moving east in a wavy motion. She loses sight of them when she gets off the freeway at the Sardis exit.

JANUARY 12th

1910 January 12 — 9:30 a.m. An unknown cigar-shaped aircraft is seen moving over Chattanooga, Tennessee, to the northeast. It returns on January 13. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1910-01-13-usa-chattanooga.htm

1910 January 12 — 4:30 p.m. An unknown airship flies high over Huntsville, Alabama, against the wind, from southwest to northeast, disappearing over the crest of Chapman Mountain.

1950 January 12 — The AF Directorate of Intelligence quietly cancels the special intelligence collection directives to various government agencies for reporting UFO incidents, though routine intelligence channels still require UFO reporting, per AFCIR-CC7, “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft.” Cancellation is a follow-up to the widely announced closure of “Project Saucer.” AFOIN Director Gen. Charles P. Cabell believes that in fact AMC is taking its UFO project underground by announcing the closure. Months later Cabell discovers that AMC Intelligence under Col. Harold E. Watson is not running a secret UFO investigation, and Cabell is forced to make up for AMC’s negligence by conducting his own UFO investigations via his AF Intelligence staff. http://www.nicap.org/docs/NARA-PBB89-381.pdf;

1950 January 12 — 11:25 p.m. A B-29 aircraft is flying over the Gulf of Mexico (southwest of Florida) on a course of 260° when three objects are noted on the radar scope orbiting the B-29 from all quadrants. The objects are noticed by the radar operator, aircraft commander, navigator, and bombardier. One object is first sighted on a bearing of 330° traveling south. The objects travel across the scope in approximately 15–20 seconds on the 100-mile range setting. In a few minutes this object is joined by two others, which disappear in a few minutes. At short ranges the object is large and well-defined on the radar scope. The object goes off for about 100 miles, turns and comes in as if for an attack, passes through the center of the scope, and emerges on the other side. The estimated speed of the object is 2,500–3,000 mph. The one object remains on the radar scope for approximately 30 minutes, following the B-29 all the time. The radar operator switches ranges on the scope and picks up the object on the 20- and 50-mile settings. Twice the object comes to within 20 miles of the aircraft and then apparently has the ability to hover, because the movement on the radar scope ceases for 5–15 seconds. After altering course the object no longer appears, but the radar is jammed for approximately 10 minutes. The crew makes no visual sighting. http://www.nicap.org/500112gulf_dir.htm

1953 January 12 — 1:00 p.m. Maurício Ramos is driving on grassy terrain near Santana dos Montes, Minas Gerais, Brazil, when he sees a luminous, metallic disc smaller than a Volkswagen hovering 6 feet from the ground. He approaches to within 6 feet of it, and a door opens. Two entities shorter than 5 feet tall, wearing lead-colored clothing with shiny balls fitted to the shoes, jump out. Ramos thinks they invite him aboard, but he does not answer because he is getting an increasingly severe headache as he watches. When the headache goes away, the disc and creatures have disappeared.

1965 January 12 — 1:00 a.m. Department of Justice Inspector Robert E. Kerringer [or is it Donald E. Flickinger, an agent of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms?] is driving near Lynden, Washington, when he sees a low-flying object, 30 feet in diameter, that avoids collision with his car at the last moment. He gets out and sees it hovering for one minute, then it flies off at high speed with a sound of rushing air. He learns that nearby Blaine Air Force Station [now closed] is tracking the UFO. http://www.nicap.org/650112blaine_afb_dir.htm

1965 January 12 — 10:58 a.m. The Kiwi Transient Nuclear Test is conducted at Area 25 of the Nevada Test Site as part of Project NERVA. The nuclear rocket engine code-named Kiwi is allowed to overheat until it bursts, sending fuel hurtling skyward. Deadly radioactive fuel chunks as large as 148 pounds shoot up into the sky and last as far away as a quarter mile. A radioactive cloud rises up to 2,600 feet, then drifts out over Los Angeles and out to sea. The AEC calls it a “safety test,” but the USSR says it violates the test ban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Kiwi

1965 January 12 — 8:20 p.m.? Mrs. Jubert and her three teenage daughters at a farmhouse near Custer, Washington, watch a round, intensely glowing object land outside a clump of evergreens near their farmyard. The object remains grounded for several minutes, and then it ascends almost vertically in a burst of speed and disappears toward the northeast. Where the object lands in 16 inches of snow, they find a large circular imprint about 10–12 feet in diameter. The ground beneath the melted snow ring shows evidence of having been scorched. Oval-shaped tracks 8 inches long and 8 inches apart, in a single file, are found leading from the landing site to the evergreens, where they disappear. One month later, the circular area still shows traces.(http://www.nicap.org/reports/650112blaine_report2.htm ; http://www.project1947.com/47cats/phillips.htm

1967 January 12 — The USAF advisory committee holds a special briefing in Boulder, Colorado. Condon discusses project plans and asks the Air Force where the project should place its emphasis. Lt. Col. Hippler, along with Col. Raymond Sleeper, Blue Book’s boss as Foreign Technology Division Commander, says the project is not required to prove or disprove anything, but that “we don’t want any recommendation from you unless you feel strongly about it.” He rejects Wertheimer’s suggestion that the project should concentrate on witnesses, not sightings. Hippler and Ratchford do not adequately respond to Low’s question about what USAF wants from the project. http://www.project1947.com/shg/articles/swordscc.html

1967January 12 — 7:30 p.m. A luminous object crosses the sky off Agadir, Morocco. It leaves a white trail that turns into a rainbow and falls into the sea with a deafening sound. The US Defense attaché in Rabat, Naval Capt. C. G. Strum, says the sighting “could be valuable in pursuit of Project Moon Dust.”

1975 January 12 — 2:45 a.m. George O’Barski is driving home through North Hudson Park, New Jersey, when he hears static on his CB radio. Through the window he sees a dark, round object with brightly lit windows hovering over the ground about 100 feet away. Ten small (3.5-feet tall), helmeted figures dressed in coveralls emerge from the UFO, dig up soil, and collect it in bags for about 3 minutes before returning to the craft, which takes off with a humming sound. O’Barski returns to the site the next day and finds holes that had been left. Hudson County Police Officers Thomas Feldhan and John Mackanics investigate and file reports. Months later, O’Barski relays the story to an acquaintance, Budd Hopkins, who is interested in UFOs. Hopkins and two others associated with the Center for UFO Studies find independent witnesses, including a doorman at the high-rise Stonehenge apartment building, Bill Pawlowski, who sees a UFO with multiple lights in the park the same time. Hopkins, Ted Bloecher (then the director of New York MUFON), and Jerry Stoehrer, also of MUFON, investigate the incident and take soil samples.

1983 January 12 — 4:30 p.m. A man and his two sons encounter a short entity in a gray “wetsuit” uniform holding a glowing L-shaped object in a swampy area near their house in Pine Township, Porter County, Indiana. Both are floating 2–3 feet above the ground. A second being is peering over a fence at them. The encounter lasts about 5 minutes, and no UFO is seen.

1988 January 12 — Ed Walters produces his most famous photo—a brightly lit structured craft hovering above a road near his home in Gulf Breeze, Florida.

1994 January 12 — Rep. Steven Schiff (D-N.Mex.) tells the press that he has been stonewalled by the US Defense Department when he requested information about the 1947 Roswell incident on behalf of his constituents and witnesses. Schiff calls the lack of response “astounding” and indicative of a coverup.

1995 January 12 — Around 5:00 a.m. Farmer Beto Lima is hunting armadillos on his property near Feira de Santana, Bahía, Brazil, when he finds an object the size of a Volkswagen beetle floating on a pond. He manages to pull it to the shore when suddenly liquid flows from it and two creatures emerge. One of them is hairy and clawed like a sloth, the other is apparently dead and looks like a child. The object is lightweight, and Lima carries it into his house. Brazilian soldiers allegedly retrieve the wreckage and the creatures. http://ufos-wilson.blogspot.com/2012/05/o-caso-roswell-nordestino-queda-de-ufo.html

JANUARY 11th

1959 January 11 — Wilbert Smith speaks on UFOs at the Illuminating Engineering Society’s Canadian Regional Conference in Ottawa. He claims that “Various items of ‘hardware’ are known to exist, but are usually clapped into security and are not available to the general public.”

1963 January 11 — At 11:00 p.m., at San Pietro Vernotico, Italy, farmer Antonio de Luca is awakened by restless animals and goes out to calm them. Fifteen minutes later he sees a domed disc some 132 feet long land in the village square. Dark figures are moving inside the transparent dome. He tries to approach but is paralyzed at 30 feet away. It ascends in the direction of Brindisi to the north, emitting a vertical beam of green light.
http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1963-Jan-Jun.pdf , p. 8

1965 January 11 — Mrs. Paul Zimmerman Gearhart and her two sons see a triangular UFO that flies slowly out of the southeast and then “suddenly plunged into the sea some miles offshore” at Tillamook Head, Oregon. It leaves behind two trails of fire.

1965 January 11 — 4:20 p.m. At least 12 persons, including six Army Signal Corps communications system specialists, at the Munitions Building at Nineteenth Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., observe 12–15 white oval objects maneuvering erratically at 12,000–15,000 feet altitude above the US Capitol Building. Two delta-wing jets, apparently from Andrews AFB, are seen in pursuit, but the objects easily outmanoeuvre them. Among the witnesses are Paul M. Dickey Jr., Edward Shad, Sam Webb, Jack McBride, and Sam Marrone. The objects are also tracked on radar. The Defense Department denies the incident, but the witnesses publicly maintain their story. The Pentagon forces a TV crew about to interview the witnesses to shut down that evening. http://www.nicap.org/650111washington_dir.htm

1969 January 11 — Keyhoe, Saunders, and McDonald hold a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to criticize the Condon report.

1973 January 11 — 9:00 a.m. Building surveyor Peter Day is driving near Cuddington, Bucks, UK, when he sees an orange light in the north, moving eastwards. He finds a convenient place to stop, wind down the window, and point his movie camera at the object. He captures 20 seconds of the orange blob on color film as it pulsates and passes behind distant trees before disappearing suddenly (in a single frame). https://bufora.org.uk/documents/1989FireintheSkyJennyRandles.pdf

1977 January 11 —The crew of an Indian Air Force jet transport is flying 42 miles west of Varanasi, India, when it encounters three luminescent discs that fly past, circle once, then continue east. Apparently, thousands see the objects from the ground over a period of 45 minutes.

JANUARY 10th

1898 January 10 — 9:00 p.m. Residents of Rome, Georgia, watch a blue light “attached to some dark and indistinguishable object” as it flies from the northwest to the east.

1934 January 10 — Swedish Gen. Pontus Reuterswärd, chief of armed forces in Upper Norrland, recommends to officials of Norrbotten County that they request assistance from the Air Force to deal with the ghost fliers. Norrbotten administrator Bernard Gärde is skeptical of the “vague and unreliable” reports at first.

1935 January 10 — Charles Spayde, the operator of a telegraph station west of Lima, Ohio, claims that he has been receiving a “series of strange, unintelligible signals” that are broad in wavelength and “come in all over the dial.” He is convinced they are not static or mechanical disturbances, and they do not originate on this planet.

1953 January 10 — 4:45 p.m. Retired Air Force Col. Robert McNab and a Mr. Hunter of the Federal Security Agency see a flat object to the northwest of their location 8 miles west of Sonoma, California. It is traveling about 2,400 mph and makes three 360° right turns in 2–3 seconds each in about 1/8 the radius required for jets (about 1/4 mile) and two abrupt 90° turns to the right and left, each turn 5 seconds apart. It almost stops, accelerates to its original high speed, almost stops again, speeds up again, and finally flies out of sight vertically. http://www.nicap.org/530110sonoma_dir.htm

1954 January 10 — 5:25–5:40 p.m. James E. McDonald, two other University of Chicago meteorologists, and another passenger are driving on Hwy 83 north of Sonoita, Arizona, when McDonald spots a brilliant white stationary object in the southwest above the Santa Rita Mountains about 10 miles away. They lose sight of it as the car moves on. McDonald searches carefully for alternate explanations, but can find none, so he reports the sighting to the Air Force in a 4-page letter.

1958 January 10 — Day. Capt. Chrysólogo Rocha is sitting with his wife on the porch of a house in Guarujá, São Paulo, Brazil, overlooking the South Atlantic. He is trying to focus with his binoculars on what appears to be a small island. When he does get focused, he realizes the island is getting bigger and is in two parts, both a clear, gray color. One part is in the sea, while the other seems suspended above it. Without warning, both parts suddenly sink out of sight. Shortly afterwards, a steamer comes into view, on a course that will take it very close to the object. About 15 minutes later, when the ship is out of sight, the object again rises slowly out of the sea. He now sees clearly that the two parts are joined by several narrow upright shafts or tubes that are bright and visible to the naked eye. These shafts, “like beads on a necklace” pass in a “disorderly and simultaneous movement.” Shortly afterwards the two parts of the object close up again, and it disappears below the waves. Probably an inferior mirage of an island in combination with a towering effect.

1961 January 10 — A US Navy A-1 Polaris missile is launched from a ground pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. A disc, whose diameter is close to the length of the Polaris, alters its tracking, but does not block the missile firing, since the tracking system continues to follow the object and later returns to again to track the Polaris downrange. The diameter of the disc is approximately 20–25 feet and it is about 6–8 feet thick at its center. It is visually lost to ground observers and the primary witness (Clark C. McClelland, with 10×50 binoculars) as it continues downrange. The original investigation is conducted by McClelland and his Florida NICAP subcommittee.(http://www.nicap.org/610110capecanav_dir.htm; http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1961-Jan-Jun.pdf , p. 6–7

1977 January 10 — 12:00 noon. Horse farmer William McCarthy is looking out his window at the falling snow when he is surprised to see a hole in his pond in the town of Wakefield, New Hampshire. The pond, 105 by 75 feet, was frozen solid just the day before. He goes outside for a closer look. The hole is perfectly round and cuts smoothly through 14 inches of ice. Eight inches of slush surrounds the hole. Peering into the hole, McCarthy sees something that looks like a one-foot-square box. He races back to the house and brings family members over for a look. Then he goes to the barn to pick up a rake, hoe, and pole. Back at the pond, McCarthy sees that the box has sunk three feet into the muck at the bottom. Frustrated in his attempt to retrieve the object, he calls a friend, Bob
Palmer, who arrives around 2:30 p.m. Concerned that they might be dealing with radioactive satellite or aircraft debris, Palmer notifies the police, who soon arrive in the company of a local Civil Defense representative. The Geiger counter indicates a reading alarmingly above normal (3 roentgens per hour versus normal background radiation of .001 roentgen). The McCarthys are warned to stay away from the water, and the CD man and the police leave to inform their superiors. By 4:00 p.m. the circle of slush has expanded to 10 feet. When McCarthy observes the pond in the morning, he discovers a second hole, this one about 50 feet from the original. Not long afterwards, someone from the attorney general’s office warns McCarthy not to let his animals drink from the pond; he reappears later in the day to express concern about possible water seepage. He also directs McCarthy and his family not to discuss the affair with anyone else until the official investigation is completed. The next day the pond is frozen over again. Disregarding warnings, McCarthy walks out on it and looks down through the clear ice where the hole has been and to the pool bottom. A fresh 6-inch-wide trench stretches from beneath the first hole all the way to the second. To all appearances, the object that entered via the former has left via the latter. State police escort all but the officially connected off the farm. Investigators try unsuccessfully to drain the pond, then see a 6-by-3-foot opening where the original hole had been. Distant observers think they see the searchers retrieve a black object and place it inside a van, which quickly leaves the area. By the end of the day, a statement from the governor’s office declares that more sophisticated equipment has found no abnormal radioactivity in the pond and the surrounding area. The black object, the authorities contend, is a container filled with soil and stone samples collected for analysis.

1978 January 10 — 12:25 a.m. A 31-year-old paramedic is driving to pick up her husband (a policeman) from work in Chicago when her 3-year-old son draws her attention to a “moving star” nearly overhead. At her destination a few seconds later, she notes a silver disc-shaped object (“with teacups on top and bottom of saucer”) as large as a full moon moving forward with yellow-orange trail behind as it moved. The object stops, reverses direction, moves forward again, and moves off behind a building. The trail is only visible while the object is in motion. Duration is 1–2 minutes.

1983 January 10–11 — CAUS director and attorney Peter Gersten has two meetings with Richard Doty in New Mexico. During the first meeting, with Bill Moore in attendance, Doty is guarded in his comments. At the second meeting with Gersten alone, he speaks openly about the 1977 Ellsworth AFB “incident” that he claims AFOSI and the FBI are investigating. He tells Gersten that the US government knows why UFOs appear in certain places and that “beyond a doubt they’re extraterrestrial” and come from 50 light years away. He mentions Project Aquarius, which he says is the government’s top-secret involvement in communications with aliens. He speaks of documents that tell of agreements between the US government and extraterrestrials under which the aliens are free to conduct animal mutilations and land at a certain base, in exchange for information about advanced UFO technology.

1985 January 10 — US physicist Bernard Eastlund files a patent on a “Method and apparatus for altering a region in the earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and/or magnetosphere,” that proposes a 40-square-mile radio transmitter using Alaskan natural gas to generate current to create electromagnetic radiation to excite a section of the ionosphere. The patent speculates on “possible ramifications and potential future developments” including magnetotelluric surveys, local weather modification, and missile defense. Eastlund later claims that HAARP is built using his patents, prompting Nick Begich Jr. to charge in 1995 that HAARP is capable of secretly controlling the weather. According to HAARP program manager John L. Heckscher, “HAARP certainly does not have anything to do with Eastlund’sthing, that is just crazy. What we have here is a premier scientific research facility with military applications.” https://patents.google.com/patent/US4686605

1997 January 10–12 — Roswell witness Jesse Marcel Jr. undergoes a second series of hypnosis sessions, this time with D.C.–area clinical psychologist Neil Hibler. They are paid for by Roswell Declaration author Kent Jeffrey, who concludes that Marcel is indeed describing weather balloon debris. However, this interpretation is disputed.

2000 January 10 — 9:00 p.m. A young man near Sézanne, Marne, France, encounters a bright white light near the town water tower. His engine cuts out and the radio stops working.

JANUARY 9th

1911 January 9 — Harvard astronomer William H. Pickering tells the Boston Post that he believes Venus is populated by “huge monsters and lizards such as roamed the earth ages ago.” He adds that “If human life exists on Venus, the people do not live as we do.”

1934 January 9 — A mystery airplane is seen again over Västerbotten province, Sweden. The Swedish Air Force loses two aircraft trying to discover where the plane is based.

1947 January 9 — The US Defense Department’s Intelligence Review, no. 49, contains a four-page summary of ghost rocket sightings and suggests some may have been Soviet test missiles or jet airplanes. https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ufo_briefingdocument/1946.htm

1948 January 9 — 11:30 p.m. Eastern Airlines pilot Hugh DuBose, flying a DC-3 aircraft at 3,000 feet altitude near Cartersville, Georgia, observes a circular object with a flat top cross his flight path at the same altitude and then turn earthward. The object is light sky-blue in color and is traveling at an estimated speed of 400 mph. http://www.nicap.org/480109cartersville_dir.htm

1950 January 9 — Time magazine reports on rumours of crashed saucers and small humanoids in New Mexico. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,811681,00.html

1953 January 9 — Howard C. Cross, a senior staff member at Battelle, writes a letter to Col. Miles E. Goll of ATIC, arguing that “agreement between Project Stork [Battelle’s study] and ATIC should be reached as to what can and what cannot be discussed at the meeting in Washington on January 14–16.” He suggests a “controlled experiment” be undertaken by USAF to obtain physical data. This would consist of “observation posts with complete visual skywatch, with radar and photographic coverage, plus all other instruments necessary or helpful in obtaining positive and reliable data on everything in the air over the area.” The suggestion is that “Many different types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area,” meaning that the Air Force would release balloons to generate spurious UFO phenomena. The memo is a desperate effort to buy time for Battelle to finish its statistical analysis. Jacques Vallée speculates that this letter by Cross (to whom Vallée assigns the pseudonym “Pentacle”) could have led to the military setting up artificial UFO waves and simulated cases in selected areas; however, this is clearly not the case, as Jennie Zeidman and Mark Rodeghier elaborately demonstrate in IUR. http://www.nicap.org/papers/Pentacle/pentacle_doc.htm; http://www.nicap.org/reports/pentacle.htm ; https://sohp.us/Sign-Historical-Group-Workshop-Proceedings.pdf, p. 48 ;

1953 January 9 — The CIA/OSI attempts to get Walter Bedell Smith’s approval for “two series” of scientific panels in January and February, which would buy some time, but the suggestion is rejected.

1953 January 9 — 6:50 p.m. An F-94 makes radar contact with a UFO at a range of about 13.5 miles over Misawa Air Base, Honshu, Japan. The radar locks on at 15,000 feet and contact is broken at a range of 600 feet. The radar observer reports unusual interference on the set throughout the mission, but the set appears to be operative both before and after. The radar contact lasts approximately 2 minutes.(http://www.nicap.org/530109misawa_dir.htm

1953 January 9 — 7:27 p.m. B-29 copilot 1st Lt. Charles C. Loveless sees a V-formation of bluish-white lights approaching his aircraft over Santa Ana, California. Pilot 1st Lt. Lowell D. Brandt turns to avoid them. http://www.nicap.org/530109santa_ana_dir.htm

1954 January 9 — Three residents of Lunéville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France, see a round object flying from north to south. The object flies more slowly than a jet plane and leaves a luminous yellow trail. It flies noiselessly, although it appears to be at a low altitude. Several students of the College de Lunéville also see the object. ClearIntent 132; https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/1954/9jan1954luneville.htm

1956 January 9 — The CIA’s Applied Science Division takes on the job of holding UFO reports.

1967 January 9 — Two teenage brothers of Mount Clemens, Michigan, Daniel A. and Grant P. Jaroslaw, take some Polaroid photos from the backyard of their home of a domed object moving slowly above Lake St. Clair. After they release the images to a wire service, the Air Force requests the originals for analysis. They refuse to relinquish them but give an officer at Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] some copies. Maj. Raymond Nyls attempts to recreate the photos at the original site using a block of wood hanging from a string on a children’s swing set. USAF turns the copies and Nyls’s recreations over to the National Photographic Interpretation Center, which takes a serious look and suspects a hoax but cannot prove it conclusively. http://www.noufors.com/two_brothers_photograph_circular_object_in_Michigan.html ; https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/feb/14/ufo-photo-analysis/

1969 January 9 — The Colorado project report is released to the public in a 965-page Bantam Books edition. https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/contents.htm

1986 January 9 — 9:00 p.m. Multiple cars stop along Interstate 84 in Hartford, Connecticut, to watch a silent boomerang-shaped object, estimated to be the size of a Boeing 747, with white, red, blue, and green lights. It moves low through the sky then hovers for 15 seconds before heading off to the west. The boomerang is also seen by dozens of witnesses in Torrington, Connecticut. A family sees the UFO, with 10 white lights, hover directly over their house, engulfing their home in a brilliant white light. They are so frightened they flee to the basement. The building inspector for Torrington sees a “cigar with square windows” near Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks. The FAA claims the object is a blimp, although there are no blimps flying in the area.

1987 January 9 — 2:30 a.m. A road-maintenance engineer is on a routine checking tour between Hajdúböszörmény and Debrecen, Hungary, at the same point where his colleague had seen a “trailer” in December. He sees a “farmhouse” with the windows lit up, but knowing there is no farmhouse in that location, he stops the truck. The object is sitting near the overhead power lines between two stacks of straw. It is about 50 feet in diameter, disc-shaped, and rounded off at the rim. Through the center line runs a row of 8–10 portholes with warm, yellow light emanating from them. Between each window is a grayish-white streak of light. He can see an open door about 5–6 feet high under the row of windows, through which he can see light and a floor with transverse ribs. Then he notices two entities wearing dark coveralls standing outside the object, while another appears in the door opening. Yellowish flashes erupt every 2–4 seconds from the top of the object. The witness flees the scene.

2018 January 9 — The Defense Intelligence Agency responds to an inquiry by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) regarding 38 projects that the military’s Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program has been involved with. The letter is released on January 16 in response to a FOIA request by Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. One such research topic, “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy,” was led by Eric W. Davis of EarthTech International, which was founded by Harold E. Puthoff, who was formerly involved in the Stargate Project. Another project called “Invisibility Cloaking” was headed by German scientist Ulf Leonhardt, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Yet another title, “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions,” was attributed to theoretical physicist Richard Obousy, director of the nonprofit Icarus Interstellar. One of those papers was released to the public by Popular Mechanics on February 14, 2020. Titled “Clinical Medical Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Dermal and Neurological Tissues,” it is written by Christopher (Kit) Green, formerly a CIA agent, forensic clinician, and neuroscientist, who describes it as “focused on forensically assessing accounts of injuries that could have resulted from claimed encounters with UAP.” https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26056/heres-the-list-of-studies-the-militarys-secretive-ufo-program-funded-some-were-junk ; https://fas.org/irp/dia/aatip-list.pdf

JANUARY 8th

1952 January 8 Battelle Memorial Institute agrees to help out the Air Force with analyzing UFO reports.

1961 January 8 — Pravda asserts that “some regions” (including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) of the USSR are reporting UFOs. It quotes physicist Lev Artsimovich saying that “it is about time that these tales be stopped no matter how breathtaking they may be.” http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1961-Jan-Jun.pdf , p. 5–6

1969 January 8 — The National Academy of Sciences releases its review of the Colorado project report, giving its enthusiastic approval. In a letter to Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Alexander H. Flax, Frederick Seitz expresses the hope that the review would “be helpful to you and other responsible officials in determining the nature and scope of any research effort in this area.” (http://www.project1947.com/shg/articles/nascu.html ; Story 244–245) Science reporter Walter Sullivan writes that the soon-to-be-released report will debunk the extraterrestrial hypothesis and dismiss “demands of some scientists and laymen for a large-scale effort to determine the nature of such ‘flying saucers.’ Such a project, the report says in effect, would be a waste of time and money.” Sullivan dismisses the project’s critics as “UFO enthusiasts.”

1974 January 8 — 3:00 a.m. John E. Justice leaves the Ohio Masonic Home in Springfield, Ohio, when his headlights dim and the engine dies. He sees a display of aerial lights descending a short distance in front of him. The blinking lights are multicolored “like a rainbow.” Suddenly they blink out and are replaced by a blinding steady white light about 6 feet ahead of and 3 feet above the car. The light is coming from the inside of the object, where he can see a lighted room with a golden aisle and five occupants seated on the left-hand side in a straight row. Each seat is a different color, and the garments of the occupants match the color of the seat. Each has long brown hair that reaches the floor. The object departs suddenly, the interior blinking out and the colored lights reappearing. The car engine starts without difficulty.

1981 January 8 — 5:00 p.m. A well-documented case of physical effects from a UFO takes place in Trans-en-Provence, Var, France. Renato Nicolaï, a gardener, hears a strange whistling sound while doing agricultural work on his property. He then sees an object in the shape of two saucers, one inverted on top of the other, about 8 feet in diameter land about 150 feet away at a lower elevation. It has a thick band around the middle section, two circles that look like trapdoors, and two feet that extend about 8 inches below the body of the machine. The object takes off almost immediately, rising above the treeline and departing to the northeast. The case quickly comes to the attention of the police and is soon investigated by GEPAN, the French government’s scientific team of UFO investigators.
The physical traces include evidence of vegetation and soil heating, skid marks, and circular ground marks. The chemical analysis reveals that the soil has been heated to 300°–600° C. Jean-Jacques Velasco thinks that the object could have weighed between 4 and 5 tons. Trace amounts of phosphate and zinc are found in the sample material, and an analysis of wild alfalfa near the landing site shows chlorophyll levels 30%–50% lower than expected. The police report says that the trace, which appears on an active road, looks like one made by a car tire. This explanation is dismissed by GEPAN because of Nicolaï saying otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-en-Provence_Case ; http://www.nicap.org/lt-810108rep.htm ; http://www.ldi5.com/ovni/sepra/nt16.php ; JUFOS 5 (1994): 109–121, https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/4/jse_04_1_velasco.pdf ; https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/volume-4-number-1-1990 ; http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/index.php?id=202&cas=1981-01-00849

1984 January 8 — 3:15 a.m. Three people are traveling southeast in a van at mile marker 236 on I-80 southeast of Cozad, Nebraska, when the highway lights up and they see a huge disc as big as a baseball diamond 75–100 feet above and slightly to the right of the road. Bright lights are evenly spaced around the rim, most of them white, but others pink or blue. As the car passes it at a slow speed, they can detect no motion and can hear no sound.

2008 January 8 — 6:10 p.m. Truck driver Harlan Cowan is traveling east toward Stephenville, Texas, when he sees to stationary lights directly ahead. They are as bright as welding arcs. They split apart and move rapidly away from each other to the north and south at a high rate of speed. At 6:15 p.m., private pilot Steve Allen and three other witnesses 5 miles southeast of Stephenville see four lights similar in intensity to burning magnesium. They come out of the northeast at a speed faster than a military jet. Allen thinks the lights are spread out over a one-mile area. They slow down and remain stationary northwest of his position, then they shift from 4 lights in a horizontal position to 7 lights in a vertical position, emit a white flame, and blink out. Over 30 more witnesses come forward to report odd lights until about 9:30 p.m. Some also see fighter jets chasing the light. Angelia Joiner, a reporter with the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, calls Maj. Karl Lewis, spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, who first tells her he thinks the lights are reflections of the sun on high-altitude aircraft. When she asks about military aircraft reported by witnesses, Lewis volunteers the information that there were no F-16s from his unit operating that night, and no other pilots had reported a UFO. On January 16, a FOIA request is sent to the Federal Aviation Administration for any radar data from sites around Stephenville. On January 23, the Air Force admits in a press release that there indeed were 10 F-16s performing training operations that night between 6:00 and 8:00. Joiner contacts Lewis again, who now merely reads the press statement and is not helpful. In February, responses to FOIAs by Robert Powell and Glen Schulze begin to arrive. Military bases unanimously respond with “we have found no records responsive to your request.” However, the FAA releases its raw radar information in mid-February. It is clear that the unknown lights are not related to F-16 activity, but there is intense Air Force activity that night. Ten F-16s and one AWACS jet make figure-8s over the area. Two F-16s from Oklahoma fly south to the Stephenville area. FAA radar returns also show a target four miles north of Allen’s sighting that moves at an apparent speed of 2,100 mph. At 7:20 p.m., two radar sites pick up a target that corresponds to Constable Lee Roy Gaitan’s observation of an unknown light. Another radar track begins at 6:51 p.m. An unknown object without a transponder signal is tracked with FAA radar for more than one hour. Two different radars (one at Fort Worth and another at Temple) make contact with the object 187 times as it covers a distance of 50 miles on a constant trajectory to the southeast. Its speed varies from stationary, to accelerating to 532 mph in 30 seconds, to deaccelerating to 49 mph in 10 seconds. It is traveling on a direct course to President George W. Bush’s Western White House in Crawford, Texas. At 8:00 p.m. it is 10 miles from Prairie Chapel Ranch. Two witnesses riding bicycles 2 miles away from the ranch see a light that slowly descends, makes a 90° turn, then speeds out of sight in 1–2 seconds. But no F-16s pursue this potential interloper. http://www.nicap.org/080108stephenville_dir.htm; http://roswellbooks.com/museum/?page_id=174 ; https://www.reformer.com/stories/military-reverses-itself-says-f-16s-were-in-texas-area-where-residents-reported-seeing-ufo,57533 ; https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/MUFON_releases_report_on_UFO_sighting_in_Stephenville,_Texas ; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d1yowzmrI0XUcnaz9BkijEtRoth2RJ7D/view

2019 January 8 — The television series Project Blue Book premieres on the History channel. The main role of J. Allen Hynek is played by Aidan Gillen, with Laura Mennell as Mimi Hynek. The series runs for a second season in 2020 before it is cancelled. UFO sceptic Robert Sheaffer, reviewing the first four episodes, points out numerous historical inaccuracies and falsehoods, some of which he characterizes as “absurd.” Concerned over misguiding viewers, he concludes that “this program references real people by their real names, a real government program, and real
incidents. It then mixes in absurd and invented details, while claiming that the show is based on real events.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book_(TV_series) ; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6632666/

2020 January 8 — Drones are now being seen in Castle Rock and Parker in Douglas County, Colorado, and Fort Collins in Larimer County. Kerry Garrison, a vice president at drone vendor Multicopter Warehouse in Centennial, claims the drone reports are actually sightings of Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX; although they are at orbital altitude, in a clear sky they can look lower than they really are. But Garrison also visited the eastern planes with other aviation experts to view the drones. He says he saw red lights go zipping by at 100 mph, faster than any drone. (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/01/mysterious-drones-fly-near-denver-as-colorado-residents-fear-a-government-cover-up/ ; https://kdvr.com/2020/01/07/local-drone-dealer-says-lights-spotted-over-castle-rock-were-satellites/ ) A close call with a drone and a Flight for Life helicopter near Fort Morgan, Colorado, prompts officials to add ground-based spotting teams and aircraft equipped to hunt drones. However, an investigation by Colorado Homeland Security later say the incident is unrelated to the drone activity. https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/publicsafety/news/updates-investigations-suspicious-drone-activity-ne-colorado; https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/02/x-zone-broadcast-network-drones-drones.html

JANUARY 7th

1948 January 7 — 1:00 p.m. Kentucky State Police telephone Commanding Officer Col. Guy F. Hix’s office at Godman Army Airfield in Fort Knox, Kentucky, reporting an unidentified object near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Another call to Hix comes from state police at about 1:10 p.m. of an observation by a civilian in Madisonville, Kentucky, through a Finch telescope of a cone-shaped object about 100 feet tall by 43 feet wide, at an altitude of 4 miles and moving at 10 mph. This is apparently General Mills Skyhook balloon Flight B, which passes about 40 miles to the southwest of Madisonville. Other reports come in from Lexington and Mannsville, Kentucky.

1948 January 7 — 1:20–2:10 p.m. Army Flight Service reports to Godman Army Airfield control tower that the object is over Irvington then Owensboro, Kentucky. Godman Tower Operator Tech/Sgt Quinton A. Blackwell, Capt. James F. Duesler Jr., Base Air Inspector Lt. Col. E. Garrison Wood, and other USAF personnel see a round or ice-cream-cone-shaped white or silver object with a revolving red streamer toward the south beginning at 1:50 p.m. Many others see it as well after 2:07 p.m., such as Operations Officer Capt. Cary W. Carter and Col. Guy F. Hix.

1948 January 7 — 2:50 p.m. Capt. Thomas F. Mantell Jr., a 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, and three others are flying F-51D fighters to Louisville, Kentucky. After Mantell reports his position to Standiford Field in Louisville, Tech/Sgt. Quinton A. Blackwell at Godman Army Airfield breaks in over the radio to request Mantell to intercept and identify the object. The object maintains a constant angular position as seen from Godman as it apparently moves away at about 240–300 mph at an altitude of 50,000–60,000 feet during most of Mantell’s pursuit. Flying at 300 mph and gradually climbing to about 22,000–23,000 feet, Mantell gradually overtakes the UFO from below, past Bowling Green, Kentucky, at about 3:10 p.m. In one of his last radio reports, Mantell says the UFO “appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size.” At 3:15 p.m., at 22,500 feet with oxygen running low, two other F-51Ds quit the chase. Mantell continues to 25,000, blacks out, and crashes at 3:18 p.m. about 4 miles south-southwest of Franklin, Kentucky. The UFO disappears from view behind a cloud at Godman at 3:50 p.m. The Project Sign staff, still not yet formally organized, are under pressure to come up with some kind of answer, so they quickly float Venus (offhandedly suggested by Ohio State University astronomer J. Allen Hynek) as an explanation. This implausible explanation is not even believed by the Air Force, but it remains unchallenged for several years. In 1952, Ruppelt reopens the case and identifies the object as a secret Skyhook balloon, although he cannot confirm a launch that day. Army veteran Clifford Stone finds later that there had been no Skyhook launches since late December.
However, Barry J. Greenwood and Robert Todd tentatively identify the balloon as one launched from Camp Ripley near Little Falls, Minnesota, on January 6. ; http://www.nicap.org/480107fortknox_dir.htm;
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-mantell-analyses.html;
hhttp://www.nicap.org/books/Mantell_Incident/The_Mantell_Incident.pdf

1948 January 7 — 4:45–7:06 p.m. USAF 1Lt. Paul I. Orner tracks an unidentified white light with red coloration in a weather theodolite at Godman Army Airfield in Fort Knox, Kentucky, for more than 2 hours.

1948 January 7 — 7:15 p.m. Air Traffic Controller and pilot Alex A. Boudreaux and VHF Direction-Finding (DF) Operator and amateur astronomer Frank M. Eisele, 103rd AACS Squadron, at Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] in Lockbourne, Ohio, spot a bright object to the southwest of the airfield that appears and disappears intermittently. Fighter pilot USAF Capt. Charles E. McGee sees the object on runway 23 landing approach when he is at about 1,800 feet. The light seems to be at about 3,000 feet to the southwest about 4–5 miles away, then later on the ground to the west about 6–7 miles away. USAF VHF DF Operator and pilot Albert R. Pickering, Detachment 733, 103rd AACS Squadron, is awakened by the sudden emergence of a lighted amber-colored round or oval object about the size of a C-47 or larger [60+ feet] dropping out of the overcast bank 10,000 feet overhead. Lockbourne Control Tower at the same time radios a report of the object, which then maneuvers over to Commercial Point about 3–5 miles away to the west-southwest, then makes three full 360° circles over one spot in 30-40 seconds per turn over the runway, at a speed of more than 500 mph, leaving a luminous, amber-colored trail or exhaust about 5 times its length. Then the UFO goes to another location and does more 360° turns. At one point, it disappears into the overcast for one minute, then reappears. Just before departing, it hovers or “appeared to touch down” on the grass extension past the end of the Lockbourne AFB runway for 10 seconds then leaves at 120° (ESE) heading into the overcast. It is also sighted by the pilot of a C-45 at 5,000 feet off the right wing at 7:53 p.m. http://www.nicap.org/480107lockbourne_dir.htm

1948 January 7 — 7:35 p.m. Base personnel at Clinton County AFB [now Wilmington Air Park] near Wilmington, Ohio, where Skyhooks are launched a couple years later, watch a quickly maneuvering object. It dances up and down and changes from red to green before speeding to the southwest. Sgt. LeRoy Ziegler thinks he can detect a faint exhaust trail. Project Sign calls it Venus, because it disappears about the time Venus does. http://www.nicap.org/mantell/mantell_part_2_11.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/480107lockbourne_dir.htm

1950 January 7 — 10:15 p.m. The assistant maintenance officer at Holloman AFB is driving south of Corona, New Mexico, when he sees a green fireball. It descends at a 60° angle, then levels out and travels 10° east before dropping out of sight behind a mountain. When first seen, it is yellowish-white, changes to orange as it descends, then turns bright blue-green as it levels out and disappears. http://www.nicap.org/corona500107dir.htm

1954 January 7 — 4:27 a.m. A fiery disk, followed by a luminous trail, is seen in Arras, Pas-de-Calais, France. The disc remains motionless in the sky for an instant, after which it flies away and disappears over the horizon. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/1954/7jan1954arras.htm

1955 January 7 — The Air Force Information Services Letter warns that service members are talking too much about UFOs.

1966 January 7 — 4:10 a.m. Police Constable Colin Perks is checking business property along Alderley Road in Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK, when he hears a high-pitched whine. He sees a greenish-gray glow in the sky about 300 feet away and 35 feet in the air. It comes from a glowing elliptical object about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide that remains stationary for 5 seconds before moving away quickly to the east-southeast.

1970 January 7 — 4:45 p.m. Two skiers, lumberjack Aarno Heinonen and farmer Esko Viljo, at Imjärvi, Finland, watch a disc-shaped, buzzing UFO approach them and hover. It is so close to Heinonen that he could touch it with his ski pole. From an opening in the center of the object’s bottom, a bright light beam is emitted, creating an illuminated area of 3 feet in diameter on the snow beneath it, edged with black. A red, gray mist descends again; when it clears, both men can see, only 10 feet away, a 3-foot tall humanoid creature standing in the illuminated area, carrying in its hands a black box with a pulsating yellow light. Its arms and legs are very thin, its face pale like wax, and its nose hooked; it wears a light green coverall with darker green knee boots, white gauntlets, and a conical metallic helmet. Then the mist again descends, and long red, green, and purple sparks float out from the lighted area. A sort of flame rises from this spot and enters the UFO; then the mist and the UFO vanish. After this experience, Heinonen finds his right leg numb, and he vomits and passes black urine; Viljo also suffers severe physiological effects. Heinonen claims, two years later, a series of contacts with a female spacewoman. http://www.nicap.org/imjarvi700107dir.htm

1971 January 7 — Two boys independently observe a metallic object with an orange glow flying over Dennis, Massachusetts. It descends and disappears over some trees and looks as if it is about to fall into Scargo Lake. One boy sees a hole in the ice on the lake; steam is rising from it, and the water in the hole looks agitated. NICAP investigator Walter N. Webb visits the lake on January 10 and reports that the hole “was formed by a rather sudden melting process.”

1974 January 7 — 8:40 p.m. A man’s car suddenly dies as he is driving near Warneton, Belgium. He sees a landed domed disc with a flat bottom like a WWI helmet, 23–33 feet in diameter and 7–10 feet wide. It has a flange around its base and three legs. White and orange alternating bands are on the glowing object. Two humanoid beings approach him. They have broad shoulders, heads shaped like inverted pears, long arms, large eyes, and no noses. One is about 4 feet tall, the other somewhat taller; a third being remains near the craft. They wear internally lit cube-shaped helmets with the face visible, gray jumpsuits, and gloves. The taller being comes within 12–15 feet of the vehicle, then opens and closes its mouth. The witness feels a shock to the back of his head and hears a low-pitched sound. The two humanoids quickly return to the craft, which now pulses with an electric blue color, and departs.

1986 January 7 — A UFO emitting beams of light toward the ground is seen in Butler, Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh, 20 minutes later, a silver-gray disc is seen.

JANUARY 6

1913 January 6 — 10:00 p.m. Two lights “thought to be the lamps of an airship” maneuver in the sky over Lavernock Battery, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. (London Daily Express, January 7, 1913, p. 5; https://airminded.org/2013/01/10/friday-10-january-1913/ )

1948 January 6 — 3:00 p.m. Bernice Zaikowski, 61, of Chehalis, Washington, hears a “sizzling and whizzing” sound and looks up to see a “birdman” hovering 200 feet above her barn. She watches “a man equipped with long silver wings fastened over the shoulders with a strap” ascend rapidly, hover, bank, then fly away. “He flew in an upright position and appeared to be manipulating controls strapped to his chest.” The wings do not flap; instead they retract close to his body during ascent, and are extended to hover or proceed in horizontal flight. Zaikowski says five other adult witnesses and a number of children also see the birdman. https://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=200703240080.the_birdmen_of_cascadia

1949 January 6 — 5:30 p.m PFC Everitt sees a bright-white, diamond-shaped light in horizontal flight from southeast to northwest above the Ordnance section at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. It is about 1,500–2,000 feet altitude and flying faster than a jet. Possible meteor. http://www.nicap.org/490106kirtland_dir.htm

1952 January 6 — Contactee George Van Tassel, living at Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, receives the first of many psychic messages from extraterrestrial starship commanders. This one is from “Lutbunn, senior in command of first wave, planet patrol, realms of Schare. We have your contact aboard 80,000 feet above this place.” Othre messages soon come from Elcar, Clota, Totalmon, Latamarx, Noma, Leektow, Luu, Oblow, Kerrull, Locktopar, Molca, Clatu, Hulda, Lata, Singba, and others. One of his contacts, Ashtar, will become a metaphysical superstar, and in the years ahead many contactees will channel communications from him.These aliens seek to raise humanity’s “vibrationary attunement” so that earthlings will not threaten the wise and peace-loving space people. Van Tassel reprints many of these messages in a misleadingly titled book, I Rode a Flying Saucer!

1953 January 6 — 1:05 a.m. The 147th AC&W Squadron at Duncanville, Texas, is notified by the CAA at Meacham Field [now Fort Worth Meacham International Airport] about a UFO northeast of Dallas. Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City reports a radar target 20 miles southwest of Paris, Texas. An arrowhead-shaped UFO is seen by some witnesses. http://www.nicap.org/530106duncanville_dir.htm

1954 January 6 — The Cleveland Press runs the headline “Brass Curtain Hides Flying Saucers” and reveals that ATIC will no longer allow reporters seeking UFO information into Wright-Patterson AFB. Its reporter is given the runaround on the Utah film.

1967 January 6 — Hynek speaks to an overflow crowd at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He says he has had to revise his thinking on UFOs, urges scientists to take an active role in investigations, and confirms reports that NORAD and SAC radar has tracked UFOs, citing a case in which SAC radar tracked a UFO at 4,000 mph on an erratic flight path.

1969 January 6 — 7:15 p.m. Future president Jimmy Carter is preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting at Leary, Georgia. One of the guests calls his attention to a strange object visible about 30° above the horizon to the west of where he is standing. Carter describes the object as being bright white and about as bright as the moon. It appears to have closed in on where he is standing but stops beyond a stand of pine trees some distance from him. The object changes color, first to blue, then to red, then back to white, before appearing to recede into the distance. Carter feels that the object is self-illuminated and not solid in nature. Carter’s report indicates that it is witnessed by about 10–12 other people and is in view for 10–12 minutes before it passes out of sight. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer concludes that the object is a misidentification of Venus. Ufologist Allan Hendry does calculations and agrees with the assessment of the object as Venus. A member of the Carter family thinks it might have been a barium cloud produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB near Valparaiso, Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_UFO_incident ; https://www.debunker.com/texts/carter_ufo.html

1976 January 6 — 11:15 p.m. Mona Stafford and two friends, Louise Smith and Elaine Thomas, are driving southwest on Highway 78 between Stanford and Hustonville, Kentucky, when they see an intense red glow in the east. It grows larger, then descends rapidly to the right of the car at tree-top level. As it hovers, they can see a disc shape with round windows with rotating, blinking red lights around each of them; yellow lights stretch below these, and a luminous blue dome is on top of the object. The UFO moves closer, flips on its side, and shines three beams of bluish-white light on the road, and another into their vehicle. Smith, apparently dazed, gets out of the car, but Stafford pulls her back in. There is a “dead silence,” their skin tingles, and they start getting severe headaches. They find the car has started back up on its own and is moving at 85 mph with no help from Smith. Stafford feels as if it is being pulled. Moments later, they find themselves 8 miles away, just outside Hustonville. When they get home to Smith’s trailer in Liberty, Kentucky, around 1:25 a.m., they find they are missing about an hour and a half of time. All three of them experience odd physical and psychological symptoms. The women are hypnotized by ufologist Leo Sprinkle, who finds that they have generally compatible memories of an abduction event. Over time, their memories of the missing time period grow more elaborate, but their story contains elements and images echoed in other accounts before and since. https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/1976-stanford-kentucky-abductions/

1977 January 6 — 1:15 a.m. Florida Malboeuf is sitting at her window at 6420 Casgrain Avenue in Montreal, Quebec, when she sees an oyster-shaped, flat-bottomed metallic object with a row of white lights around its base. It flies in from the north and lands on the rooftop of a three-story apartment building across the street from her only 60 feet away. Immediately two figures appear on the roof; they are over six feet tall and thin, with long arms. They are wearing white one-piece uniforms with their heads covered with tight “bath helmets.” They stand looking at the street, then at the sky, then they apparently return to the object. A moment later they disappear, and the UFO rises from the roof about 20 feet and flies off to the east. Her son André goes over to the rooftop in question and finds a large, elliptical-shaped crust of ice, about 18 feet in diameter, on top of the snow. He also finds four small footprints only 6.5 inches long. http://www.waterufo.net/item.php?id=1295

1991 January 6 —6:00 p.m. Four family members driving along the E411 motorway near Spontin, Belgium, watch a gigantic, plate-shaped UFO with many lights and a cupola pass overhead heading northwest. At 6:30 p.m., a family driving south on the A4 in Beez, Belgium, see three lights attached to an object hovering above a quarry. An army veteran named Hardy estimates the UFO to be about 260 feet long and 30–50 feet high, with the forward three lights in the form of a rectangle and a red light on the lower rear end. The bottom part is bulged out and dark gray in color. On the side, 15 portholes are lit up in white light. After parking their car on the side of the road, the witnesses watch the object for another minute or so. As soon as Hardy turns on his headlights, the object moves away to the northeast.

1991 February 6? — Evening. A woman is walking with two friends near the Étang de l’Ursuline in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine, France, when they notice a large and brilliant “star” in the western sky. At nightfall, they return to their homes. One, who lives on the Rue Alexis Maneyrol, goes back to look for the star, which suddenly moves in the shape of a triangle. While walking back through the woods, she is struck by a beam. She returns home to sleep, but is surprised by an intruder in her house, a small figure in a watery-green cosmonaut suit who points to a screen showing the interior of a spaceship. The screen and figure dissolve. The next day, near a bus stop she sees a strange figure wearing a cape who scowls at her terrifyingly.

1995 January 6 — 6:48 p.m. Capt. Roger Wills and First Officer Mark Stuart are piloting a British Airways Boeing 737 aircraft with 60 passengers when they are buzzed by a bright wedge-shaped object as they are preparing to land at Manchester Airport, UK. The object appears only yards in front of the airliner as it flies at 4,000 feet. It is so close that Stuart instinctively reacts by ducking down inside the cockpit. It has small lights, makes no attempt to change course, and makes no discernable sound or turbulance. The object does not appear on radar. Possibly a fireball meteor. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/ufo-near-miss-over-the-airport-883365

2020 January 6 — A meeting of local, state, and federal agencies brings 75 people to Brush, Colorado, to share information and strategy on the mystery drones. Officials are looking for a command vehicle (such as a “closed box trailker with antennas or a large van”) that might be controlling the drones. https://www.mysterywire.com/mysteries/command-vehicle-focus-of-colorado-drone-investigation/

JANUARY 5

1949 January 5 — The USAF Technical Information Division at Wright-Patterson AFB transmits Project Sign’s list of UFO incidents to the Air Weather Service for analysis and recommendations. http://www.nicap.org/docs/SignRptFeb1949.pdf

1955 January 5 — 4:00 p.m. A red metallic ball about 7 feet in diameter lands near Oiartzun, Spain. Witnesses at two separate locations see the object descend. One of them, Felix Galarraga, rushes towards it but the UFO rises and speeds away. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1955-Jan-June.pdf

1965 January 5 — 5:56 p.m. NASA engineer Dempsey Bruton, head of the Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, observes a round, bright-yellow light rising from the horizon. The apparent size of the object is that of a nickel held at arm’s length. As the object reaches an overhead position, it disappears. The length of observation is approximately 8–9 seconds. The witness claims that his wife and brother-in-law also see the object. http://www.nicap.org/650105wallops_isle_dir.htm

1979 January 5 — 6:20 p.m. Anmarie Emery is driving near Auburn, Massachusetts, when she notices three, red-glowing, triangular objects flying over woods to her left. As she rounds a corner, she sees them hovering above the road directly in front of her. The radio goes dead, the car slows to a stop (although the engine continues to run), and she feels completely paralyzed. The closest object is only 30 feet away. She feels heat on her face and smells an unpleasant odor. When another car approaches, the three objects shoot straight up, one at a time, and everything returns to normal. When she returns home to Cambridge, Massachusetts, she notices her face is reddened. She develops a rash and peeling skin the next day. https://vdocuments.mx/reader/full/mufon-ufo-journal-1979-3-4-march-april

1982 January 5 — The Society for Scientific Exploration is founded by Peter A. Sturrock at a meeting held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., in order to study phenomena “generally regarded by the scientific community as being outside their established fields of inquiry.”

2000 January 5 — Shortly after 4:00 a.m. The “St. Clair Triangle,” “UFO Over Illinois,” “Southern Illinois UFO,” or “Highland, Illinois UFO” sighting takes place over the towns of Highland, Dupo, Lebanon, Shiloh, Summerfield, Millstadt, and O’Fallon, Illinois. Five on-duty police officers around these locales, along with various other eyewitnesses, report a massive, silent, triangular or rectangular craft operating at an unusual treetop-level altitude and speeds. One of the police officers manages to get a single yet ambiguous Polaroid photograph of the object. The incident is examined in the ABC special Seeing Is Believing with Peter Jennings, an hour-long Discovery Channel special UFOs Over Illinois, an episode of the Syfy series Proof Positive, and a 30-minute independent documentary titled The Edge of Reality: Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000 by Darryl Barker Productions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(UFO) ; http://dbarkertv.com/UPDATE.htm ; http://www.skinwalkerranch.org/videos/illinois_trianglehypothesis.pdf ; https://rense.com/ufo6/buffs.htm

2000 January 5 — Bill Sweetman writes in Jane’s International Defence Review that there are approximately 150 “special access programs” within the Pentagon at the close of 1999, many of which are unacknowledged. They often have completely independent systems of classification, with total control exercised by the program manager. He concludes that most are dominated not by Defense personnel but by private contractors. He has no idea how they are funded. http://www.exopoliticssouthafrica.org/download/Sweetman_In_search_of_the_Pentagon_Dollars.pdf

2009 January 5 — 8:15–9:00 p.m. Mysterious floating red lights in the sky are reported near Morristown, New Jersey. The red lights are also observed on January 26, January 29, February 7, and February 17. The events are later revealed as a hoax perpetrated by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo, who are conducting a social experiment to expose ufology as a pseudoscience and raise consciousness around the unreliability of eyewitness claims. They release five flare lights attached to helium balloons. Reports are concentrated in the towns of Hanover Township, Morristown, Morris Plains, Madison, and Florham Park. On April 7, Russo and Rudy plead guilty to charges of disorderly conduct and are sentenced to fines of $250 and 50 hours of community service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morristown_UFO_hoax

2018 January 5 — 1:30 a.m. A woman looking from her bedroom window in Linden, Michigan, sees a large object emitting red-orange light approaching her. It stops dead above her head, accelerates, then slows down. Her husband goes outside and watches it before it blinks out.

JANUARY 4th

1906 January 4 — Night. Martin Meyerson is on the beach at Paia, Maui, Hawaii, when he sees a green object with the shape and diameter of the full moon appear from behind the southern slopes of the Wailuku Mountains. It is so bright it illuminates the cane fields below, then travels like a “slow-pitched baseball” and disappears behind Mount Haleakala to the southeast.

1913 January 4 — 5:00 a.m. Council worker John Hobbs hears aerial motors at Dover, UK, and sees a light speeding toward him from the sea in a northeasterly direction. It is moving steadily despite a gale-force wind. Two other people, tradesman Mr. Langley and Police Constable Pierce, hear the noise but do not see the object. https://airminded.org/2013/01/06/monday-6-january-1913/

1913 January 6 — 10:00 p.m. Two lights “thought to be the lamps of an airship” manoeuvre in the sky over Lavernock Battery, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. https://airminded.org/2013/01/10/friday-10-january-1913/

1937 January 4 — New ghost flier sightings around the fortress at Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden, have prompted Gen. Pontus Reuterswärd to alert Minister of Defence Janne Nilsson about the possibility of foreign spies.

1949 January 4 — 2:00 p.m. USAF pilot Capt. Paul R. Stoney, on the ground at Hickam Field [now part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam] near Honolulu, Hawaii, sees a flat, white, elliptical object about the size of a T-6 aircraft, circle at about 3,000 feet while oscillating to the right and left. It is apparently several miles off the base and slowly circling. It is bright white on the underside and darker on top and possesses no other structures. It proceeds for 15 minutes to make “rhythmical undulation” maneuvers in a cyclical manner. The “object seemed to manoeuvre under control at all times completing 360° turns and 90° turns.” The object then “departed climbing (into the northeast) at accelerated speed out of sight.” http://www.nicap.org/490104hickam_dir.htm

1954 January 4 — Shortly after 9:00 p.m. A round luminous machine, coming from the south, lands at the Marignane Airfield [now Marseille Provence Airport], Bouches-du-Rhône, France. There is only one witness present, a fireman at the airport named Chesneau. The machine disappears while he is telephoning the control tower. Careful scrutiny of the runway the next morning turns up a few pieces of metallic debris. The story is confirmed by a Marseille resident who is driving from Arles to Marseille and sees a large, round, reddish fireball, but places the time at 10:45 p.m. https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/1954/4jan1954marignane.htm

1964 January 4 — Barney Hill has his first hypnosis session with Benjamin Simon. The sessions will continue until June 6. Throughout they undergo sessions separately, and for the most part are instructed not to remember their experiences afterwards. Barney’s sessions are particularly intense. However, by the end of the sessions, although they disagree with Simon on the nature of the experience, both the Hills and Simon agree that the therapy is successful. The stress and anxiety are gone. Simon submits a statement to the Hills’ insurance company, which initially declines to pay, until Simon explains that he was treating them for what will later be called PTSD.

1975 January 4 — 3:30 a.m. Carlos Alberto Diaz is walking home from a bus stop along Daniel de Solier street, Ingeniero White, near Bahía Blanca, Argentina, when he is blinded and paralyzed by a beam of light. He revives inside a UFO where three greenish, 6-foot-tall creatures, are plucking hair from his head and body. Diaz faints and wakes up in the afternoon in Buenos Aires some 400 miles away, where someone takes him to the Hospital Ferroviario. However, an extensive investigation by ufologist Roberto Enrique Banchs uncovers numerous discrepancies that strongly indicate a hoax. https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2012/03/carlos-alberto-diaz-abduction.html

1976 January 4 — A technician driving home is stuck in rush hour traffic at Sale, heading toward Altrincham, Cheshire, UK. Suddenly his radio begins to hiss and crackle, and flashes of light spark out, dancing across the windshield. As he looks out through the steady rain, two angular, ice-blue lights pass slowly across his field of view. Moments later they are gone, the sparking stops, and the radio works again.

1979 January 4 — Just after 12:00 midnight. Meagen Quezet and her son André go looking for their dog that has just run barking away from their home in Krugersdorp, Gauteng, South Africa. Driving along a remote country road, they find the dog standing 60 feet away from a lead-colored, egg-shaped object with landing gear. Five or six dark-skinned entities are standing in front, wearing white or pink suits and shoes. One with a beard bows to Quezet and says something unintelligible. André runs to get his father, whereupon the beings enter the craft, which takes off making a purring sound. Quezet undergoes hypnotic regression by Bernard Levinson on June 21, where she remembers the “leader” cajoling her to come on board, which she does with her son, seeing lights, panels, chairs, and a table. They jump out again, protesting that they can’t go.

1994 January 4 — RAAF Wing Commander Brett Biddington informs civilian UFO groups in Australia that the number of UFO reports submitted to the RAAF has declined significantly in the past 10 years, saying “there is no compelling reason for the RAAF to continue to devote resources to recording, investigating, and attempting to explain [Unusual Aerial Sightings].” He says that reports will be forwarded to civilian groups.

2004 January 4 — 8:30 p.m. An Aer Lingus Boeing 737 with 135 people on board is about 2 miles off the east coast of Ireland approaching Dublin Airport. It is being followed in for landing on Runway 10 by a British Midland Airbus A330-
200 at a distance of 6 miles. Both are at an altitude of 3,000 feet and moving at 287 mph. As the 737 approaches Slane, the A330 crew observes unidentified traffic take off vertically from a field. The object has bright strobe lights and is triangular in shape. It begins to circle the 737, which experiences a power drain. The A330 sees a purplish glow surround the 737, whose captain requests a course change to avoid the object, which is passing in front of the airliner. The UFO angles to the port side and the 737 experiences a huge wake of turbulence and an increase in outside air temperature to 327° F. for about 15 seconds. The A330 also feels the turbulence, and the UFO heads southeast at great speed. When the 737 lands, the crew cannot raise the speed brakes on the wings, which are found to be damaged, as if dented by a hammer. There is also aircraft skin damage and hydraulic damage to the brakes caused by the UFO wake.

2004 January 4 — 10:30 p.m. Another Airbus 330-200 is approaching the east coast of Ireland, bound for Dublin Airport, when the crew sees a flashing strobe light over Slane, County Meath. As the aircraft throttles back to 265 mph at 2,500 feet, the UFO takes on a triangular shape, passes in front of the plane, and gives off a bright flashing light. The UFO begins circling the Airbus in an aggressive manner. The crew expects a collision with the object, which is about 360 feet wide. The interior lights dim (power drain) and the encounter continues for 8–10 minutes as passengers watch. At one point, wake turbulence from the UFO triggers the wind shear warning device. Other aircraft in the vicinity are watching the encounter and listening in to radio transmissions. Just 2 minutes before landing, the UFO shoots away to the southeast.

JANUARY 3rd

1952 January 3 — Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, Assistant for the Production of Intelligence, writes a memorandum for General John A. Samford with the title (Secret) “Contemplated Action to Determine the Nature and Origin of the Phenomena Connected with the Reports of Unusual Flying Objects.” It lays down the investigative shortcomings of Project Grudge and suggests policies and agendas for the immediate future. Garland mentions that the aircraft inventions and models by the Horten brothers had fallen into the hands of the Soviets at the end of World War II. http://www.nicap.org/waves/garland.htm

1953 January 3 — The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS) is created at Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs by Air Defense Command Regulation AFR 24-4. One of its missions is to collect physical UFO evidence.

1958 January 3 — Cliff DeLacey, a 23-year-old college student from Vallejo, California, shoots 90 seconds of film of UFOs at Diamond Head, Hawaii. DeLacey sees nine UFOs flashing across the sky and immediately grabs his camera. He is careful enough to shoot the tops of nearby trees, allowing a reference to the height and relative speed of the unknown objects. The objects appear to be about 3–4 miles away from the camera, flying at an altitude of 7,000–8,000 feet, and moving at a speed slightly greater than that of a jet. The silvery globules appear to be no more than 20 feet in diameter. They are spherical, and no tail fins or protrusions of any kind are visible. The film, in color, is said to be clear and to show at least two of the nine UFOs in considerable detail. http://www.nicap.org/580103diamond-head_dir.htm

1967 January 3 — 2:00 a.m. A dome-shaped object hovers for several miles above a car in New Richmond, Michigan. It illuminates the road, and the car draws to a stop with loss of steering control and the radio failing. Examination of the car by engineers at the Ford Motor Company 2 months later shows no faults unexplainable by ordinary causes.

1971 January 3 — 6:15 a.m. Mauno and Martta Talala are drinking coffee when they see a brilliant light approaching from the lake outside their home at Saapunki, Kuusano, Finland. It is about 33 feet in diameter and moving against the wind. Their electricity goes off briefly. Looking out the window, the Talalas see their whole yard bathed in light caused by a huge fireball about 60 feet away, which rises up and disappears after a few seconds. Around 8:30 a.m., their son Timo asks them what the marks are in the snow outside. He has noticed a spot of hard green ice that is not covered with snow. Mauno takes some green ice and melts it into dark green water. The melted area is about 20 feet long by 10 feet wide, in the middle of which are ice needles as big as fingers with a ball of ice on top and some soot. The following day, he tells the newspaper, which sends a photographer to the site. UFO researchers from Oulu arrive on January 6 and take samples from the melted area and measure radiation.

1974 January 3 — 9:30 p.m. Two young student teachers are driving home near Leek, Staffordshire, UK, when a green mass appears to follow them. The couple feels a presence. Despite being on a lonely road, they get out of the car to watch a dark mass low above their heads, with arcs of blue and green light encircling them. In terror, they head off over the moors, but moments later they run over a cattle grid, inexplicably finding themselves in Ilam 12 miles away. Seconds later there is another bump, and they reach a developed area that turns out to be a town 20 miles to the north. They find a police station to report the incident and find that it is now 3:30 a.m.

1982 January 3 — Two Brazilian Air Force F-5 fighters flying at about 5,000 feet over Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, see a dark metallic-looking object about 66 feet long, 55 feet high, and 3,000 feet away. The control tower cannot see anything in the vicinity. The F-5s get closer, but the object ascends and stays above them. They stay in this position for 30 seconds and then the UFO accelerates and disappears.

1984 January 3 — 4:14 a.m. A woman wakes up in her home near Port Washington, Wisconsin, when a bright light shines through the bedroom window. She sees a strange object with three circular lights in a fixed position about 50 feet from the shore of Lake Michigan. The center light, as bright as a searchlight, rotates north, casting an illumination on the water, which is seen to be turbulent. All three lights are rotating clockwise around a 30-foot body. She wakes up her husband, who suggests that it is a Coast Guard helicopter. But the object is completely silent. After a short time, a smaller object also with three lights appears over the first one, hovers a few minutes, then disappears. The searchlight periodically shines directly in the window. The object moves about 20–30 feet then hovers there another 10–15 minutes. At 5:15 a.m., it moves away and disappears to the southeast. The woman goes back to bed, but soon feels a powerful electric shock penetrate her body with a buzzing sound.

JANUARY 2nd

1934 January 2 — 3:45 a.m. Olof Hedlund is taking a walk in Sorsele, Västerbotten, Sweden, when he hears an engine above him. There is a full moon and visibility is good. He sees an airplane fly over the city from the west, passing directly above the train station. It turns three times in wide circles, then it takes off to the north, following the railroad tracks. It is at about 1,300 feet altitude and visible for 15 minutes.

1945 January 2 — 2:30 a.m. USAAF Lieut. Jack Green and navigator Lieut. Warren Barber, 653rd Bombardment Squadron, are conducting a reconnaissance flight in a Mosquito over Netherlands and northern Germany when they encounter two balls of fire on three occasions pacing their plane. Barber describes them as a “pair of fog lights, shooting up to 60 or 70,000 feet.”

1945 January 2 — The New York Times publishes an article, “Balls of Fire Stalk US Fighters in Night Assaults over Germany,” stating that the foo fighters are German weapons. Lieut. Donald J. Meiers of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron says he has been followed by foo-fighters twice. “A foo-fighter picked me up at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine Valley. I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping right up with us.”

1945 January 2 — Col. Clayton Lawrence Bissell, in the Pentagon’s Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, sends SHAEF in Paris a classified message seeking an explanation for the red balls of fire pacing planes. No response has been located to date. http://www.project1947.com/fig/1945a.htm

1975 January 2 — 11:00 p.m. An officer and several soldiers on a military patrol at the Las Bardenas Reales firing range near Arguedas, Navarre, Spain, see a group of intense lights moving slowly then remaining stationary on the ground for 25 minutes. Through binoculars, they see an object shaped like “half an orange” that rises and slowly disappears on the horizon. Some 30 observers view the lights for 3–4 minutes.

1978 January 2 — 11:00 p.m. Four young men are driving through an isolated area known as Simonswood Moss, between Rainsford and Kirkby, West Lancashire, UK, when they realize they have taken a wrong turn onto a narrow dirt road bordering a ditch. They suddenly see a 7-foot tall figure with red eyes appear in the glare of the headlights 26 feet ahead. The being is wearing a white, fluorescent one-piece suit with boots, it has no discernible facial features, and it has short arms ending in claws. On its chest is a box with two flashing red lights. The figure takes two steps towards the witnesses and suddenly stops. The witnesses panic and leave the area, driving to a nearby farm where they notify the police. A later investigation suggests that they have seen a cow wandering down the lane, te car’s headlights reflecting in its eyes. http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/1978-01-02-uk-simonswood.htm

1962 January 2 — Writer Bob Pratt flies out to Arizona to meet William Moore, who has called him to propose a non-fiction book project about UFOs. Moore tells him about MJ-12, Project Aquarius, and other alleged revelations. Pratt secretly tapes his conversations with Moore, which reveal his contacts with Richard Doty and other agents of disinformation. http://web.archive.org/web/20140328105832/http://www.michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/2007MUFONSymposiumNewMJ12Revelations.pdf

1998 January 2 — 9:30 p.m. Fernando Mariano de Oliveira and Luciene da Cunha Lopes are in a townhouse on the Rua Luis Augusto Ferreira in the Capão Redondo neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, when they see a small luminous sphere about 8 inches in diameter moving up and down in the sky at variable speeds about 500 feet away from them. Other family members join them to watch the silent white light, and the neighborhood dogs bark constantly. Fernando’s brother, Alan Bruno de Oliveira, 10, picks up a camcorder and films the light with the help of his cousin Katiuscia da Cunha Lopes for 4.5 minutes. The light disappears around 10:00 p.m.

JANUARY 1st

1931 January 1 — 1:00 a.m. J. Stewart Childerhose and his brother, two farmers of Cobden, Ontario, see an object with a brilliant white light on its front illuminating treetops on the shore of Muskrat Lake. Green and white lights twinkle on its tail end. It moves in a rectangular path, then speeds up suddenly and climbs out of sight.

1937 January 1 — Noon. Pilot Howard S. Behr is flying a Curtiss-Wright CW-15 Sedan at 3,000 feet over Virginia on his way to Raleigh, North Carolina. Suddenly he sees an object beginning to cross his flight path about 1,000 feet below him. It looks like a gondola, gun-metal gray in color, with both of its ends turned up. He estimates it is about 35–40 feet long and traveling at 150 mph. It moves off to his left and disappears.

1949 January 1 — 5:00 p.m. Pilot Thomas A. Rush and his wife are in a private plane flying east of Jackson, Mississippi. They see a cigar-shaped object, 60 feet long and 10 feet wide, cross their path at an altitude of 1,500–1,600 feet. It is only about 500 feet distant. The speed is approximately 200 mph, and it accelerates to 400–500 mph. The object makes a 50° turn and is visible for 10–12 seconds. http://www.nicap.org/490101jackson_dir.htm

1951 January 1 — 7:00 a.m. Katie Sowell watches an object about 30–50 feet in diameter, like two “upside down saucers” revolving counterclockwise and darting low over her farmhouse near Oak Grove, Louisiana. It has rectangular, opaque windows. It is seen for 15–20 minutes at close range. It banks and disappears, going straight up. http://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1951-SN.pdf p. 1–2

1952 January 1 —10:54 p.m. Warrant Officer W. J. Yeo (a master telecoms specialist) and Sgt. D. V. Crandell watch a silent, reddish-orange object circle and maneuver for nearly 9 minutes at RCAF Station North Bay, Ontario. It appears to be very large and travels at supersonic speed.

1953 January 1 — 8:45 p.m. While driving on Hwy 91 between Craig and Wolf Creek, Montana, Warner E. Anderson, manager of a photo shop with wartime air spotter experience; Mrs. Greta C. Wills, manager of women’s apparel store; and teenager Marlene Wills see a saucer-shaped object above horizon about 5 miles away to the southwest. The object is an estimated 25–40 feet long and 6–8 or 18–25 feet thick and looks like two soup bowls joined at the rims. It has a red glowing bottom and portholes. The object dives low over the Missouri River to within 150–300 feet away then climbs fast horizontally at an estimated 3,600 mph to the northeast. http://www.nicap.org/chronos/1953fullrep.htm

1954 January 1 — 10:15 a.m. Capt. Douglas Barker, a pilot with Australian National Airways, is at his home in Doncaster East, Melbourne, Victoria. He sees a “metallic, mushroom-shaped object” flying over the Yarra River valley toward the Templestowe brickworks in the northwest. He estimates it is traveling at 700 mph at a height of 2,000 feet. Its apparent size is four times that of a DC-4 aircraft. It is oscillating rapidly in and out of thick cloud. It is elliptical with a “long shaft about the same length as its body hanging below it.” Total duration of the sighting is 12 seconds. (http://www.nicap.org/540101australia_dir.htm )
January 1–2 — 10:35 p.m.–12:05 a.m. Navy pilot Lt. JG George G. Morgan of Naval Air Station Lakehurst [now Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst], Toms River, New Jersey, police chief Richard Clement, police officer Oliver G. Osborne, and other witnesses see 3–12 round white objects with fuzzy edges slightly smaller than the full moon hovering in the south for 90 minutes as 2 objects circled around another one. They then switch places. Some witnesses attempt to drive toward the objects to investigate. The objects suddenly depart to the southwest at extremely high speed, growing smaller until they disappear in 1–2 seconds. Multiple independent witnesses across a baseline of at least 12 miles allow for triangulation that locates the objects near Beach Haven, New Jersey, from distances of 15–40 miles. At least five witnesses use binoculars. Hynek calculates a departure speed of 90,000 mph, a hovering altitude of 4 miles, and a diameter of 1,500 feet. http://www.nicap.org/540101tomsriver_dir.htm

1959 January 1 — Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, on holiday in Germany, makes a cryptic statement about the failed launch of Pioneer 3 by a Juno II rocket on December 6, 1958: “We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had hitherto assumed, and whose base is at present unknown to us. More I cannot say at present.
We are now engaged in entering into closer contact with those powers, and in six or nine months’ time it may be possible to speak with more precision on the matter.”

1964 January 1 — Many witnesses in Shanghai, China, see a huge cigar-shaped UFO flying toward the southwest. MiG fighters are scrambled in pursuit but fail to intercept it. The official explanation is that it is a US missile.

1970 January 1 — 5:00 a.m. Registered nurse Doreen Kendall is looking out a window at the Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan, British Columbia, and sees a bright, Saturn-shaped object about 50 feet in diameter hovering one story above her, about 60 feet off the ground and 40 feet away. It has a row of lights around its middle. She can see two humanoid figures in dark, tight-fitting clothing and wearing headgear in the upper portion. One stands at an instrument panel, with the other behind it. The second being looks directly at Kendall, then touches the first being, who moves a lever, apparently causing the craft to tilt down and provide a view of its interior. Kendall calls for other witnesses, who arrive in time to see the UFO leave.

1975 January 1 — 6:25 a.m. Four Spanish Army soldiers (Manolo Aguera, Felipe Sánchez, Ricardo Iglesias, and José Laso) are driving near Quintanaortuño, Burgos, Spain, when Aguera sees a light fall from the sky at great speed. He stops the car and all four get out and watch a bright yellow object just above the ground some 1,300 feet away where the light has fallen. It has the form of a truncated cone and emits white jets of light toward the ground. The light goes out suddenly and four others appear in a straight line, lighting up in succession. Driving on toward Burgos, the soldiers stop two more times to watch the lights. Investigator Malo Martínez later finds two parallel scorched areas where there are numerous randomly spaced holes where the grass has been burned all the way to the ground.

1975 January 1 — Just before sunrise. Actor Warren Oates is with four friends (Lee Clayton, Trina Mitchum, Judy A. Jones, and Ted Markland) in the desert about 20 miles northeast of Palm Springs, California, when they see an object moving in a semicircle through the night sky. They describe it as an oval, metallic object flashing yellow, green, and white lights, with one large orange light in the center. Clayton, watching it through binoculars, sees a bell shape on the top, and estimates it is about 3–5 miles away at an altitude of 2,000 feet. It stops and hovers momentarily before moving off behind the mountains.

1975 January 1 — 8:00 p.m. François Perez and his wife are chased in their car by a 33-foot long oval object in Valence, Drôme, France. They retrace their route one hour later after telling police. They see the oval object again, about 1,200 feet from them in a field. It appears to be 90–120 feet in diameter and surrounded by a halo of white light. After 10 minutes, the object begins flashing and rises up into the air at a 45° angle. They complain of eye pain and conjunctivitis for 48 hours afterward, and Perez’s watch stops working.

1978 January 1 — 12:45–1:00 p.m. Pilots Floyd P. Hallstrom (in a Cessna 170A) and Jim Victor (in a Mustang II 4954) are flying over Santa Monica, California, at 7,500 feet when they see an object approaching at high speed. As the UFO passes about 6,000 feet to his left, Hallstrom is looking down on it an angle of about 30°–45° and its true form suddenly becomes clear to him. He is able to make out the complete form of a saucer and can see the dome, also very vividly clear, including all the windows, about 16–20 evenly spaced around the circumference of the dome, located just above the base. The dome appears to be a perfect hemisphere about 20 feet in diameter resting on the base, which is about 30 feet in diameter. The UFO continues on a course opposite to the pilot’s with no sign of rotation, oscillation, pitch, roll, or yaw. Neither is there any sign of a propulsion system. The sun reflects off the dome as a bright spot when the UFO passes. After about a minute, the object disappears from view behind the Cessna. http://www.nicap.org/780101santamonica_dir.htm

1979 January 1 — 5:00 a.m. Former USAF UFO spokesman Albert M. Chop and his wife and daughter watch a triangular UFO moving slowly eastward over the mountains southeast of Palm Desert, California. It is about 10 times as bright as the background stars. It is in sight for about 45 minutes, by which time it has become a small, distant light in the eastern sky.

1986 January 1 — The Usenet bulletin board service ParaNet is launched, managed by James J. Speiser in Arizona. It quickly develops into a thriving community where a full range of researchers, skeptics, and cranks can post articles. Dale Goudie takes over the online information service Computer UFO Network. Operating out of Mercer Island, Washington, it functions as a UFO bulletin board using a voice and data line connected to an IBM personal computer. CUFON receives most of its reports from Bob Gribble of the National UFO Reporting Center. By late 1986, Goudie has more than 1,700 members and is receiving many calls per day, mostly IFOs.

1993 January 1 — 1:30 a.m. A taxi driver has just dropped off revellers at a remote house in Hethersgill, Cumbria, UK. She heads home down a remote track toward the main road when suddenly her CB radio begins to crackle then fades entirely. Moments later her car engine and lights fail, and she coasts to a stop. She gets out, hoping to walk back to the house, when she sees a ball of light low over the road heading towards her. It swoops over her car and shoots into the sky, causing her skin to tingle. The headlights come back on, the car lurches forward, and she hears her sister talking on the CB asking where she has been for the past 30 minutes.

2005 January 1 — The UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 comes into full force. Around 120,000 requests are made in the first year. Private citizens make 60% of them, with businesses and journalists accounting for 20% and 10% respectively. However, requests from journalists tend to be more complex and consequently more expensive. UFOs are one of the three most popular FOI requests made to the Ministry of Defence.

2017 January 1 — Richard F. Haines retires from his role as chief scientist for NARCAP. He reports: “The fact that no cause-effect relationship has been found in major UFO airborne safety incidents doesn’t support the notion of nearby, material objects or phenomena in the air. Finally, the well-intentioned change of the term UFO into UAP—hoping to reach a larger scientific audience—served little and no relevant achievement followed.”