On Tuesday, habitual conspiracy theorists celebrate what they believe was a 1947 alien spacecraft crash and US cover-up.
Each summer, the world marks Unidentified Flying Objects Day, or UFO Day.
On Tuesday, habitual conspiracy theorists celebrate what they believe was an alien spacecraft crash and a US government cover-up that allegedly occurred in the summer of 1947, in Rosswell, New Mexico.
But what is the celebration? And who started it? Below is all we know about UFO Day.
As defined by the World UFO Day Organization (WUFODO), the World UFO Day is a day dedicated to the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects.
It aims to raise awareness about the “existence of UFOs and with that intelligent beings from outer space,” encouraging people to “think about the possibility of us not being alone in the Universe”.
It also wants to encourage governments to declassify their files on supposed UFO sightings.
There are various celebrations but according to WUFODO, on this date, people are encouraged to look at the sky and try to identify UFOs.
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Before, this commemoration was celebrated on June 24, the date on which aviator Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unusual objects flying over the state of Washington.
Arnold described the UFOs as a “saucer-like” or ” a big flat disk”. This description ended up shaping the way UFOs were imagined.
It commemorates the date on which the famous Roswell incident was exposed to the public.
On an unknown day in July,1947, a Project Mogul balloon crashed in the desert near Rosswell, New Mexico.
The wreckage of the balloon was first spotted by William Brazel, who described it as a “large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks”.
This would pave the way for a craze for extraterrestrial encounters that had a strong impact in 1950s Hollywood, peaking in the 70s and 80s giving rise to classics such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET and of course Star Wars.
“The Navy does not think that aliens have been flying in US airspace,” one Navy official told CNN.
But there have been “a number of reports of unauthorised and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” according to the official.
US presidents have been known to talk about the subject of UFOs and the Roswell incident.
Barack Obama during an interview with GQ magazine in 2015 said: “I gotta tell you, it’s a little disappointing. People always ask me about Roswell and the aliens and UFOs, and it turns out the stuff going on that’s top secret isn’t nearly as exciting as you expect.”
However, Jimmy Carter reported spotting a UFO in 1969 during an interview with Larry King. “There were about twenty of us standing outside of a little restaurant, I believe, a high school lunchroom, and a kind of green light appeared in the western sky. “This was right after sundown. It got brighter and brighter. And then it eventually disappeared. It didn’t have any solid substance to it, it was just a very peculiar-looking light. None of us could understand what it was.”
However, in an interview with ABC News, US President Donald Trump was more sceptical when the report by Navy pilots spotting UFOs was mentioned. “I think it’s probably – I want them to think whatever they think,” the president told ABC News. “They do say, and I’ve seen, and I’ve read, and I’ve heard. And I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particular.”