![World UFO Day feted amid surge in sightings, government denials](https://th-i.thgim.com/public/incoming/vjytoz/article68362495.ece/alternates/LANDSCAPE_1200/World_UFO_Day_03159.jpg)
World UFO Day feted amid surge in sightings, government denials
The Hindu
Former US Air Force officer testifies about UFO reverse engineering, Mexican Congress presents supposed alien mummies, NASA researches UFOs. Yet UFOs don’t exist.
For those of you who don’t celebrate World UFO Day, consider this: A former US Air Force intelligence officer told Congress last summer about a government programme that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
The Mexican Congress held an unprecedented session in September during which supposed mummies were presented as “nonhuman 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 researchers said the mummies “made no sense;” and that a NASA study found no evidence of extraterrestrials.
There’s still never been a better time to mark World UFO Day.
Aliens? Or just balloons and crash test dummies? World UFO Day has its roots in the so-called Roswell Incident on July 2, 1947. On that date, something crashed at what was then the J.B. Foster ranch in New Mexico. There were reports that the US military had recovered a “flying disc.” But officials later said the debris was merely the remnants of a high-altitude weather balloon.
The Air Force investigated the incident in 1994 amid charges that it was covering up the truth. It concluded that the supposed alien spacecraft was likely a secret Army Air Force balloon designed to monitor Soviet nuclear testing.
The material found near Roswell consisted of foil-wrapped fabric, wooden sticks, rubber pieces, and small I-beams with strange markings on them. A local newspaper headline described the find dramatically and unequivocally: Air Force Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch.
“The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information that the ‘Roswell Incident’ was a UFO event,” wrote Col. Richard Weaver, author of the report.