| Universal History Archive/ Getty Images |  | July 8, 1947 | Residents of sleepy Roswell, New Mexico, were greeted with a strange headline on the front page of their local newspaper, the "Roswell Daily Record," on July 8, 1947. Prominently displayed in bold type, the headline read, "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." The article detailed the mysterious events surrounding a reported "disk" that crashed some 70 miles outside town. While many details remained unknown, the newspaper crucially reported that the Roswell Army Air Field, or RAAF, had "come into possession of a flying saucer."
Americans were already on edge from another infamous "alien" encounter near Mount Rainier in Washington state a few weeks earlier, and the news of the "Roswell Incident" set off a nationwide UFO craze. In the midst of this, a rival newspaper debunked the story, with the Air Force clarifying that the "saucer" was just a weather balloon. (Years later, the world learned that this "weather balloon" was actually a device designed to detect Soviet Union atomic weapons activity.) But to this day, ufologists and other skeptics still see Roswell as an extraterrestrial event. Need proof? Just visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center — located in Roswell, New Mexico.
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