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© History Oasis
From crop circles to cockpit cameras, humanity has been chasing lights in the sky for decades.
These fourteen incidents—spanning military scrambles, mass sightings, and objects that defied physics—transformed UFOs from fringe fantasy into documented mystery.
Some got explanations. Others never did.
Here's what happened when the impossible showed up on radar, film, and in the testimonies of pilots, police, and thousands of ordinary witnesses who all saw the same inexplicable thing.
The Roswell incident was a 1947 event where debris from a secret military surveillance program called Project Mogul was mistaken for a crashed UFO, leading to decades of conspiracy theories and claims of alien bodies and government cover-ups.
Nazi doctor Josef Mengele had been recruited by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators" to cause hysteria in the US, though this theory has been thoroughly debunked along with many other sensational Roswell myths.
The Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting in 1947 is considered the first major UFO sighting of the modern era, where Arnold reported seeing nine shiny objects flying at incredibly high speeds near Mount Rainier. One of the craziest aspects is that Arnold estimated the objects were traveling at over 1,700 miles per hour, which was about three times faster than any known aircraft at the time and would have far exceeded the sound barrier that had not yet been broken.
The Barney and Betty Hill incident in 1961 is considered one of the first widely-publicized alien abduction claims in the United States.
One of the most intriguing aspects is Betty Hill's sketch of a "star map" she allegedly saw aboard the UFO, which some researchers later claimed matched the Zeta Reticuli star system.
However, subsequent analysis showed this match was likely coincidental.
The Kecksburg UFO incident of 1965 involved reports of a fireball seen over multiple U.S. states and Canada, with some claiming an object crashed in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
NASA released a statement in 2005 saying experts had examined metallic fragments from the area and determined they were from a Soviet satellite, but records of their findings were lost in 1987.
This led to Freedom of Information Act requests and court orders for NASA to search for the missing records, adding to speculation about a potential cover-up.
The Westall UFO incident of 1966 in Melbourne, Australia, involved hundreds of students and staff at Westall High School reportedly witnessing multiple UFOs silently flying and landing in a nearby field, making it the largest mass UFO sighting in Australian history.
Some witnesses described seeing the object being pursued by five unidentified aircraft, while others reported observing circular areas of flattened or "boiled" grass at the alleged landing site, leading to decades of speculation and even the creation of a UFO-themed playground.
The 1976 Tehran UFO incident involved multiple civilian sightings and two Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets encountering an unidentified flying object, with pilots reporting instrument failures and weapons systems malfunctions when approaching the UFO.
Major Parviz Jafari's claim that he saw a smaller object emerge from the primary UFO and come straight towards his jet at high speed, followed by another bright object appearing to land gently on the ground while emitting an intense light.
The Rendlesham Forest incident, often called "Britain's Roswell," involved reported UFO sightings and strange lights near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England in December 1980, with multiple U.S. Air Force personnel claiming to have witnessed unexplained phenomena.
Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt reported seeing a beam of light streaming down from an unidentified object during his investigation, and the incident led to the creation of a "UFO Trail" in Rendlesham Forest to commemorate the event.
The Belgian UFO wave was a series of reported sightings of triangular UFOs in Belgium from November 1989 to April 1990, with the most notable event occurring on March 30-31, 1990 when two F-16 fighters were scrambled to investigate radar contacts.
The famous photograph associated with this UFO wave, showing a triangular object with lights, was revealed in 2011 to be a hoax created by Patrick Maréchal using a styrofoam model and flashlights.
The Phoenix Lights incident of March 13, 1997, was a mass UFO sighting event where thousands of people reported seeing mysterious lights in the sky over Arizona and Nevada.
Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona at the time, initially mocked the sightings but years later claimed he had personally witnessed a large, unexplained craft, describing it as "otherworldly" and larger than anything he had ever seen as a pilot.
The "Tic Tac" UFO incident of 2004 involved retired Navy Commander David Fravor and other pilots encountering an unidentified aerial phenomenon off the coast of Southern California.
One of the most intriguing aspects is Fravor's description of the object as a white, wingless "Tic Tac" shape about the size of his F/A-18F fighter jet, which demonstrated incredible speed and maneuverability beyond known aircraft capabilities, including seemingly disappearing and reappearing 60 miles away in less than a minute.
The 2006 O'Hare International Airport UFO sighting involved 12 United Airlines employees and other witnesses reportedly observing a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering over Gate C-17 for about five minutes.
The object allegedly shot upward at high speed, leaving a clear blue hole in the cloud layer that seemed to close itself shortly afterward. Despite multiple credible witnesses, the FAA declined to investigate, claiming it was a "weather phenomenon" and did not appear on radar.
The Stephenville Lights refer to a series of UFO sightings that occurred in January 2008 near Stephenville, Texas, where multiple witnesses reported seeing large, silent, fast-moving objects with bright lights in the night sky.
The U.S. Air Force initially denied any aircraft activity in the area, but later admitted that F-16 fighters were present, leading to speculation about a potential cover-up and increased interest in the unexplained nature of the sightings.
The U.S. Navy confirmed that three widely-circulated videos show "unidentified aerial phenomena," acknowledging the existence of unexplained objects captured on film by military personnel.
These UFO sightings occurred in 2014 during military training exercises, with Navy officials expressing concern about the safety and security implications of unidentified objects entering their airspace.
ʻOumuamua, the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, puzzled astronomers with its cigar-like shape and unexpected acceleration as it passed through in 2017.
Some researchers, including Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, suggested it could be an artificial object like an alien solar sail, while others proposed it might be a nitrogen iceberg from an exo-Pluto or a hydrogen iceberg from the core of a molecular cloud.
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