Out of this world

Classic tales of alien vessel sightings on Roswell anniversary

- BY SIOBHAN MCNALLY

Keep watching the skies... today is World UFO Day, when all things alien and eerie are celebrated.

The idea of spacefaring beings is now so ingrained in our culture that they are commonplace in stories, but the modern phenomenon only dates back to 1947.

On June 24 that year, private pilot Kenneth Arnold told an amazing story to fellow fliers after a trip in Washington state, in the US.

He said he had seen nine shiny crescent-shaped flying objects travelling at impossibly high speeds near Mount Rainier. Then a few days later, on July 2, came the infamous Roswell Incident, whose anniversary is now marked as World UFO Day.

Strange debris found near the New Mexico city sparked stories of alien bodies being recovered from a crashed spaceship, and hidden in a top-secret government base.

Just two days later, building public interest in possible aliens, United Airlines pilot Captain EJ Smith and his first officer Ralph Stevens reported seeing luminous flying objects from their Douglas DC-3.

They said the objects flew in ways no human-made aircraft could have.

Their report was the first by professionals but it came amid hundreds of similar stories.

Since then alien tales have abounded.

Some have been pure fiction like Steven Spielberg's 1982 blockbuster ET the Extra-Terrestrial but some have been presented as fact. In 2023 Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan presented two tiny bodies to a meeting with his country's top politicians, claiming they were non-human beings.

But the figures bore an uncanny resemblance to the animatronic star of Spielberg's film - and they were later reported to be hoaxes made of human and animal bones.

In 1966 people at Westall High School in Melbourne, Australia, reported seeing odd craft, and a photo even emerged showing what looks like a Hollywood classic UFO.