The Roswell Incident
The account
A flying saucer crashed in the desert and the bodies of its crew were taken away by the U.S. government.
What investigators found
The base itself announced it had recovered a "flying saucer" and backtracked the next day. In 1994, the Air Force attributed the debris to Project Mogul, a program of spy balloons.
The story
In early July 1947, the rancher Mac Brazel found debris scattered across a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico: light sticks, foil-like paper and rubber. He alerted the sheriff, who called the town's air base.
On July 8, the base itself announced to the press that it had recovered a "flying saucer." The next day, a general corrected the story: it was a weather balloon. The case was forgotten for more than 30 years, until, in 1978, former major Jesse Marcel said the material was not of this world. Accounts then emerged of the bodies of small beings being taken away in secret.
In 1994, the U.S. Air Force revealed that the debris came from Project Mogul, a program of spy balloons designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests. In 1997, it attributed the "bodies" to parachute test dummies. For many, the explanation came too late. Roswell became the UFO capital of the world.