Category: History

Today, July 3 in 1947, Rancher Mack Brazel of New Mexico (left) was out riding with a neighbor kid and ran across a large amount of debris littering one of the fields on the Foster Ranch, where he was foreman.

A couple of days later, Brazel was in the little, nearby town of Corona where he reported his find to the sheriff.

Thus began a series of events that are now known as the "Roswell Incident."

The name Roswell got involved because Roswell is the nearest "big" town near Corona. It was also the location of an important Army Air Field that became important to the story. And there was a second debris field found near Roswell itself.

Strange things happened during this incident, including the detention of Mac Brazel for several days, following which he changed elements of his story.

He wasn’t the only one.

The Army initially put out a press release saying that they’d found the wreckage of a "flying saucer." Yes! That’s right! The Army really did claim to have found a flying saucer.

Of course, this was only two weeks after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting that gave us the term "flying saucer." It wasn’t yet a fixed part of saucer mythology that they were from other worlds. At the time, many might reasonably have thought they were classified aircraft we or the Germans or someone had come up with in or immediately after WWII.

On the right is the front page of the Roswell Daily Record for July 8, 1947, with the lead story based on the Army press release. HERE’S A LINK TO THE TEXT.

The story was also carried by numerous papers around the world, including THE TIMES OF LONDON.

The saucer story was the government’s first account of what happened at Roswell.

But they immediately changed their story.

The government’s second story was that it was a weather balloon that had crashed. In Ft. Worth, Texas Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey (left) displayed alleged wreckage from the weather balloon.

The third story came out in 1994, when the government conceded that what crashed wasn’t a weather balloon. They still claimed it was a balloon, though–part of PROJECT MOGUL–a covert Cold War project using high-altitude balloons in an attempt to monitor distant nuclear tests being done by Russia.

GET THAT VERSION OF THE STORY.

That didn’t explain the "alien bodies" people reported seeing at Roswell, though.

Enter the fourth story: In 1997 the government issued a report, which claimed that the alleged alien bodies were really crash test dummies like the one pictured on the right, which was donated to and is on display at the Roswell UFO Museum.

MORE ON THE STORY.

Problem is: These dummies weren’t in use in 1947. They were in use something like ten years later. The Air Force has countered that the alleged witnesses’ memories suffer from "time compression"–that is, they’re misremembering when they saw dummies by almost a decade.

MORE ON THE ROSWELL INCIDENT.

There are some fascinating theories about what happened at Roswell, including some that have nothing to do with aliens. One is really shaking up the UFO community right now. I’ll mention more about that in the near future.

In the meantime, the Roswell Incident continues to be debated and continues to have a strong presence in popular culture through countless movies, films, and books.

The real explanation for what happened is the stuff of which debates are made.

Fortunately, I happen to know what the Truth behind Roswell is.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

The other day we noted the anniversary of the mysterious explosion that was the Tunguska Event of 1908.

Tonight, July 2 is the anniversary of another mysterious crash or explosion that was heard by witnesses and led, the next day, to events that are still widely discussed.

Story tomorrow.

No story today. Story tomorrow.

I’m a few days late with this, but famed American writer and historian Shelby Foote has gone to meet his Maker.

He was 88 years old.

Following an early career as a novelist, Foote turned to history, writing extensively about the Civil War, which he described as America’s equivalent to the Illiad.

He was a keystone interviewee in Ken Burns’ 11-hour documentary The Civil War, which made him nationally famous.

Foote was the best friend of fellow-novelist Walker Percy, and once the two went to visit William Faulkner. Percy was too shy to enter Faulkner’s dwelling. Foote knocked on the door, entered, and spent several hours there while Percy waited in the car.

REQUIESCAT IN PACEM.

Yesterday, June 30, Thomas Sowell turned 75.

Normally I’d put a birthday listing in the "Current Events" category, but I decided to put this one in history because Sowell chose to celebrate his birthday by writing a column in which he reflects on the seventy-five years he’s been alive and all that’s happened in them.

They form one third of the time the United States has been around, and a lot has happened, both here and abroad.

His conclusion?

There is much to complain about today and to fear for the future of our children and our country. But despair? Not yet.

We have all come through too much for that.

GET THE STORY.

NOTE: I make a conscious point of listening to my elders, and for a very simple reason: They know stuff that I don’t. I recommend the policy generally, and it’s a treat to have someone like Sowell reflect on the events of his life–so far!

Many happy returns, Dr. Sowell!

Today, June 30, in the year 1908 was the day something really mysterious happened over the Tunguska region of Siberia. It also flattened a lot of trees in the area.

Folks in the region saw a fireball streaking across the sky, following which there was a huge explosion and half the sky lit up. Then there was a shockwave that knocked them off their feet and broke window panes 400 miles away from the explosion.

The sky didn’t get dark that night in Europe. There were "skyglows" for several nights, and on the first people said it was so bright that you could read newspapers without artificial light.

Nobody knows what caused this–not for sure, anyway. When folks finally got around to investigating the site (20 years later!), they didn’t find any obvious impact crater, suggesting an airburst event fairly high up in the atmosphere.

Leading theories are that it was a meteorite that exploded in the air–or a comet fragment.

More exotic (and less likely) theories include a chunk of antimatter or a small black hole or an alien spaceship.

LEARN MORE.

(Also, SPACE.COM HAS A STORY ABOUT SOME FOLKS STILL ADVOCATING THE SPACESHIP THEORY AND CLAIMING WRECKAGE WAS RECOVERED.)

ALSO TODAY IN HISTORY:

• Albert Einstein published his paper in 1905 that proposed the theory of special relativity, and
• Adolph Hitler in 1934 staged the Night of the Long Knives.

Also today, June 26, but in 1963–mere months before he was shot dead in Dallas–President John F. Kennedy uttere the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

By this he meant "I am a Berliner," and he said it as an expression of solidarity with the people of West Berlin, who were under dire threat from the Communist puppet state of East Germany and its Soviet masters.

The Berliners loved it. Wild cheers all round.

Now: Turns out that many folks today argue that Kennedy didn’t really say "I am a Berliner" in German. They claim that, instead, what he actually said was more like "I am a jelly donut." It wasn’t that he didn’t say the words "Ich bin ein Berliner" correctly. He said them right (albeit with his thick Boston accent). It’s that the words themselves are wrong.

According to this claim, in German the word "Berliner" is a reference to a kind of jelly donut. And it is. But not so much in Berlin, where Kennedy was speaking.

The "I am a jelly donut" thesis is reportedly an urban legend that started in the 1980s.

Not convinced? Well . . .

HERE’S AN ARTICLE FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION.

Also today, June 26, but in 1963–mere months before he was shot dead in Dallas–President John F. Kennedy uttere the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

By this he meant "I am a Berliner," and he said it as an expression of solidarity with the people of West Berlin, who were under dire threat from the Communist puppet state of East Germany and its Soviet masters.

The Berliners loved it. Wild cheers all round.

Now: Turns out that many folks today argue that Kennedy didn’t really say "I am a Berliner" in German. They claim that, instead, what he actually said was more like "I am a jelly donut." It wasn’t that he didn’t say the words "Ich bin ein Berliner" correctly. He said them right (albeit with his thick Boston accent). It’s that the words themselves are wrong.

According to this claim, in German the word "Berliner" is a reference to a kind of jelly donut. And it is. But not so much in Berlin, where Kennedy was speaking.

The "I am a jelly donut" thesis is reportedly an urban legend that started in the 1980s.

Not convinced? Well . . .

HERE’S AN ARTICLE FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION.

Today, June 26, in 1409 the Western Schism got 100% worse.

The reason? The Church now had 300% of the requisitie number of popes.

Now, in truth, it only had one real pope–ever. But there were at this time two additional "popes," or antipopes as they would be properly called, also running (or strolling or sitting) around Europe causing havoc.

On June 26, 1409 the second antipope, Alexander V, was "elected" by the Council of Pisa. (Not an ecumenical council.)

He wouldn’t last long.

Ten months later, he’d be dead, though he did have a successor.

Ultimately the Western Schism was sorted out in 1417, when the Council of Constance deposed the two antipopes, accepted the resignation of the true pope, and elected a new true pope, the way for one thus being cleared. The result being Pope Martin V.

Though the Western Schism was over, the damage it did to the fabric of Western Christendom was horrendous. The experience of having two–and then three–popes vying for power left severe questions in the minds of many folks, and the perception of the Church was gravely weakened.

This is thought by many historians to have been one of the reasons leading to the Protestant Reformation.

I’d love to give you a link where you could spit on the grave of Alexander V, but I don’t have one, so you’ll have to settle for

LEARNING MORE ABOUT HIM.

AND ABOUT THE SCHISM ITSELF.

Today, June 25, in 1875, they fit the battle of Little Big Horn, resuting in the death of one of the biggest little men of the 19th century.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer made his last stand against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Sitting Bull didn’t do a lot of sitting that day, though, and Crazy Horse didn’t prove too crazy, for Custer was shuffled off this mortal coil in a battle that lasted about two hours.

Vain and ambitious in life, Custer found the fame he was looking for in death.

So at least he got something out of the battle.

MORE ON CUSTER.

MORE ON THE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN.

Today, June 24, back in 1947 was the day which led to the coining of the term "flying saucer."

Pilot Kenneth Arnold saw what appeared to him to be a series of fast flying objects that he afterwards described as skipping on the air like a saucer being skipped across the water.

He was misquoted by the press, though, as having said that he saw "flying saucers." Arnold tried to correct the impression, saying that he didn’t say that the craft were saucer shaped but that they moved like a someone skipping a saucer on the water.

His actual description was: "They were half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. …they
looked like a big flat disk." What he thus described as more like a "flying wing" aircraft design (something we puny humans had actually already built). Nertheless, the term (and the shape) stuck.

He also didn’t say anything about them being from outer space. In 1947, hot on the heels of WWII and all the weapons and aviation research it involved (including what we were retrieving from the Nazis via classified projects like Operation Paperclip), might have made a more terrestrial explanation plausible.

But that didn’t stick either.

GET THE STORY.