Roswell Incident: UFO Crash Report Captivates America
The military's own press release said it: "flying disc." On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field's public information officer Walter Haut announced they'd recovered one from a nearby ranch. Newspapers ran wild. Then twenty-four hours later, the story changed—just a weather balloon, they said. Rancher Mac Brazel, who'd found the debris, was held for questioning for days. The 509th Composite Group, the only atomic bomber squadron in the world, suddenly couldn't identify a balloon. That reversal spawned eighty years of conspiracy theories, making a small New Mexico town synonymous with government secrecy.
July 8, 1947
79 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on July 8
Fifteen thousand starving Crusader soldiers marched barefoot around Jerusalem's walls in a religious procession while Muslim defenders watched from the ramparts…
The Byzantine army slaughtered 15,000 Hungarian soldiers at Sirmium in a single afternoon. Manuel I Komnenos had lured King Stephen III's forces into the marshl…
Roger of Lauria's galleys trapped the Angevin relief fleet in Malta's Grand Harbor before a single soldier could disembark. June 8, 1283. The Provençal commande…
Four ships. That's what Vasco da Gama commanded when he left Lisbon on July 8, 1497, chasing a sea route to India's spice markets. His crew of 170 men faced ten…
A young girl unearthed the icon of Our Lady of Kazan from the ashes of a devastating fire, and the image quickly became the most venerated in the Russian Orthod…
Charles II granted a royal charter to Rhode Island, formally establishing the colony as a haven for religious dissenters. By guaranteeing freedom of conscience,…
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