UFO Files: top 10 UFO sightings

A list of 10 of the most famous UFO incidents in history and how the authorities explained them.

One of several documented cases of triangular craft seen and recorded over Belgium during the 1990s during one of the most famous UFO "flaps" of the last 30 years.

By Sasjkia Otto

Newly-released Ministry of Defence files, documenting around 800 UFO sightings between 1981 and 1996, suggest that a US spy airplane could account for a number of British UFO reports. Some of the most notorious alien sighting have been explained away by scientists but mystery surrounds others:
 
1. 1947 Roswell crash: UFO proponents claimed that the US military had captured a crashed alien aircraft. This well-publicised, controversial incident became a pop culture phenomenon.
Explanation: the US military maintained that it had recovered debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to a classified programme named “Mogul”.

2. 1947 Kenneth Arnold case: the press coined the term “flying saucer” after this American businessman and pilot claimed he had seen nine objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington. Arnold described them as saucers skipping across water.
Explanation: The US Air Force formally listed the case as a mirage.

3. 1952 Washington, D.C. flap: this series of UFO reports was accompanied by radar contacts at three separate airports. Country-wide headlines spurred the formation of the CIA Robertson Panel.
Explanation: the US Air Force suggested that a temperature inversion - in which a layer of warm, moist air covered a layer of cool, dry air closer to the ground - had caused radar signals to bend and give false returns.

4. 1957 Levelland case: police investigated numerous motorist reports of engines stalling when encountering a glowing, egg-shaped object. Motorists claimed that their vehicles had restarted after the "object" had left.
Explanation: an air force investigation concluded that an electrical storm had caused the sightings and vehicle failures.

5. 1966 Westall encounter: more than 200 students and teachers at two schools in Melbourne allegedly saw a UFO that descended into a grass field. The object then ascended over a local suburb, according to reports. Witnesses still gather for reunions.
Explanation: Australian Skeptics, a non-profit organisation which investigates paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims by using scientific methodologies, believed that the object was an experimental military aircraft.

6. 1967 Shag Harbour crash: a large object crashed into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia.
Explanation: The Canadian Department of National Defence officially classified this sighting as unsolved following a naval search and investigation. The Condon Committee, which investigated UFOs at the University of Colorado, failed to resolve the case.

7. 1976 Tehran incident: A UFO was believed to have disabled the electronic equipment of two F-4 interceptor aircraft as well as ground control equipment. The Iranian generals involved said on public record that they had thought the object was extraterrestrial.
Explanation: UFOs: The Public Deceived, a book by Philip Klass, claimed that witnesses saw an astronomical body - probably Jupiter - and pilot incompetence and equipment malfunction accounted for the rest.

8. 1986 São Paulo chase: around 20 UFOs were seen and detected by radar in various parts of Brazil. They reportedly disappeared as five military aircraft were sent to intercept them.
Explanation: Geoffrey Perry, a British space researcher, attributed the incident to debris that were ejected by Soviet space station Salyut-7 and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere around central-western Brazil.

9. 1989/1990 Belgium wave: around 13,500 people claimed to have witnessed large, silent, low-flying black triangles. Around 2,600 filed written statements describing what they had seen. The frequently-photographed wave was tracked by NATO radar and jet interceptors and investigated by Belgium’s military.
Explanation: Renaud Leclet, a French ufologist, believed some of the sightings could have been explained by helicopters.

10. 2008 Turkey video: a night guard at the Yeni Kent Compound claimed he had videotaped multiple UFOs over a period of four months. Reported witness confirmations spurred claims by Sirius UFO Space Science Research Center it was the “most important images of a UFO ever filmed”.
Explanation: Turkish scientists claimed it was a computer-animated hoax.

Source