NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — For those of you who don’t celebrate World UFO Day, consider this:
A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer told Congress last summer about a government program that recovers and reconstructs unidentified flying objects.
The Mexican Congress held an unprecedented session in September that presented alleged mummies as “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution.”
And NASA now has a director of research for unidentified flying objects, or what it calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”
Never mind that the Pentagon denied the former intelligence officer’s claims, that Mexican investigators said the mummies “made no sense” and that a NASA investigation found no evidence of aliens.
There’s never been a better time to celebrate World UFO Day.
A look at the history of World UFO Day:
Aliens? Or just balloons and crash test dummies?
World UFO Day has its origins in the so-called Roswell Incident of July 2, 1947. On that date, something crashed on what was then the J.B. Foster ranch in New Mexico. There were reports that the U.S. military had recovered a “flying disk.” However, officials later said the debris was merely the remains of a high-altitude weather balloon.
The Air Force investigated the incident in 1994, amid allegations that it covered up the truth. The Air Force concluded that the alleged alien craft was likely a secret Army Air Force balloon designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
The material found at Roswell included foil-wrapped cloth, wooden sticks, pieces of rubber, and small I-beams with strange markings on them. A local newspaper headline described the find dramatically and unambiguously: Air Force Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch.
“The Air Force investigation has not produced or yielded any information that the ‘Roswell Incident’ was a UFO event,” wrote Col. Richard Weaver, author of the report.
In 1997, the Air Force issued another report criticizing the UFO claims, stating that the alleged alien bodies found near Roswell were merely dummies used in parachute tests.
Some UFO researchers have pushed back against that explanation, noting that such dummies were not used until 10 years after the Roswell incident. And they said it would be a tall order for people claiming to have seen alien bodies to mix up their dates so badly.
The life-size dummies were used in high-altitude parachute jumps from 1954 to 1959, with most landing outside military bases in eastern New Mexico, near Roswell, the Air Force report said.
The dolls had an aluminum or steel skeleton, latex or plastic skin, a cast aluminum skull, and an instrument cavity in the torso and head.
According to the Air Force, the existence of such dummies was not widely known outside scientific circles and “they could easily be mistaken for something they are not.”
UFOs are a national security concern
In 2022, Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in half a century, with the Pentagon investigating hundreds of unexplained sightings in the skies.
The objects spotted appeared to be aircraft flying without any recognizable propulsion. They have been reported near military bases and coastlines, raising the possibility that what witnesses actually spotted was classified Chinese or Russian technology.
A 2021 government report examined 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories. It found no extraterrestrial connections, but drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection.
Lawmakers from both parties have said the UFOs are a national security concern. But the sightings are usually fleeting. Some appear on camera for no more than a moment — and are sometimes distorted by the camera lens.
Ronald Moultrie, the deputy secretary of defense responsible for intelligence, said at a 2022 hearing that the Pentagon was trying to destigmatize the problem and encourage pilots and other military personnel to report anything they saw that was unusual.
Something strange happened last year.
At a congressional hearing in late July, retired Air Force Major David Grusch testified that the U.S. has been hiding a long-standing program that recovers and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
When asked if the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch replied that the U.S. has likely been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
The Pentagon denied Grusch’s claims of a cover-up and denied the existence of such a program.
Shrunken bodies with shrunken heads
Unlike the hearings in the US, the testimony before lawmakers in the Mexican Congress included alleged evidence from foreigners.
During an unprecedented session in September, Mexican journalist José Jaime Maussan presented two boxes containing shrunken bodies with shrunken, deformed heads – believed to be mummies found in Peru.
“It is the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA shows us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing like them in the world, then we must consider them as such.”
The apparently desiccated bodies date back to 2017 and were found deep underground in Peru’s sandy coastal desert of Nazca. Most attribute the famous Nazca Lines to ancient indigenous communities.
Julieta Fierro, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Astronomy, was among those who reacted skeptically, saying that many of the details of the numbers “didn’t make sense.”
She noted that scientists would need more advanced technology than the X-rays they say they use to determine whether the supposedly calcified bodies were “non-human.”
At another hearing in November, Maussan raised the case again, citing a “non-human” who had no lungs or ribs.
NASA Chief: ‘Show Me the Evidence’
In March, the Pentagon published an investigation into the many UFO sightings over the past century. No evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence was found.
The report analyzed U.S. government research since 1945 and found no evidence that the U.S. or private companies had imitated alien technology.
The Pentagon report came about six months after NASA published a report on UFOs that also found no evidence of aliens.
But NASA Director Bill Nelson did acknowledge that within the billions of galaxies in the universe, there could be another planet similar to Earth.
“If you ask me, do I believe there is life in a universe so big that I have a hard time imagining how big it is? My personal answer is yes,” Nelson said at a news conference.
When asked by reporters whether the U.S. or other governments were hiding aliens or alien spacecraft, Nelson said, “Show me the evidence.”
