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A post by Maynard

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc…
—from an army press release of July 8, 1947

This week celebrates the 60th anniversary of whatever happened at Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947.

There are various claims and counter-claims about what went down at Roswell. But the noteworthy aspect of this incident was that something really did fall out of the sky, and it was initially proclaimed by officials to be an extraterrestrial vehicle. Subsequent government clarifications asserted the wreckage was actually the debris of a weather balloon, and ultimately the entire event was officially attributed to Project Mogul, a then-top-secret high-altitude monitor for global atomic tests. The Project Mogul balloon was a weird high-tech contraption that appeared to be of unearthly origin.

I’m inclined to accept the mundane explanation. But it’s interesting to note how the outlandish stories become ever-more colorful as time passes. In recent months, the deathbed confession of Lieutenant Walter Haut has surfaced. This is the man who was the public relations officer at the army base in 1947, and who was responsible for the original press release that loosed the story upon the world.

Later this week, the public will converge upon the Roswell UFO Festival, July 5 through 8. My personal advice: While you’re in the vicinity, drop in at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and take an amazing underground tour.

I’ll close with the note that Al Gore was born March 31, 1948. As everyone knows, space aliens have a special affinity for Earth females, which leads to a number of regrettable abductions and seductions. If the aliens did indeed visit Earth in early July of 1947…well, you do the math. This would explain a lot of things.