Wednesday, November 05, 2014

The New York Times' Roswell coverage in 1947




I was doing some archival research today on non-UFO related history at Acadia University, and I took the opportunity to check the New York Times on microfilm for their version of the Roswell "crash"... and here it is. What I found particularly interesting was the coverage the "flying disc" phenomenon was getting in the week before the Roswell incident, stemming from the Kenneth Arnold sighting in June, 1947. Flying saucers were certainly in the news, and imaginations were working overtime, which is probably the biggest reason why the people who jumped the gun and released the press release about the "Roswell crash" got it wrong... and then had to retract their error shortly thereafter and use the weather balloon cover story for what they had really found - the top secret Project Mogul. Anyone who thinks those kinds of things can't happen to even the best of us just doesn't understand human nature.

Paul Kimball

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