The McMinnville Photos
The account
A farming couple photographed a metallic disc flying over their own farm.
What investigators found
Analyses disagree: some see a distant object, while others argue for a small model hanging from a wire.
The story
Late in the afternoon of May 11, 1950, Evelyn Trent saw a disc-shaped object over her family's farm near McMinnville, Oregon. Her husband, Paul, grabbed the camera and took two pictures. The images ran in the local paper and then in Life magazine, becoming some of the most widely published UFO photographs in history.
The Air Force-funded Condon Committee examined the case in the late 1960s and found no clear signs of a hoax. Skeptics, however, argue that the object sits directly beneath power lines visible in the scene and that the shadows point to a small, nearby model. The couple stood by their story for the rest of their lives.