UFOs and Roswell, 60 years on

Nick Pope: 60 years ago a pilot saw something he couldn't explain and the term "flying saucer" was born. Then, just a few weeks later, something unidentified crashed in a place called Roswell. But what exactly happened all those years ago? And why, 60 years later, does the subject still fascinate us?On 24 June 1947 a light aircraft pilot called Kenneth Arnold was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 10,000 feet. Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated his aircraft. Visibility was good and as he scanned the sky to locate the source of the light, he saw a formation of nine shiny metallic objects flying in formation. He estimated their speed as being around 1600 miles per hour - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time. He described the craft as delta-shaped and said they moved in a jerky motion. When describing this motion to a reporter, he said the objects moved "liked a saucer would if you skipped it across the water".The reporter seized on this phrase and in his story described the objects as "flying saucers". The label stuck. Once the story appeared in the newspapers, similar reports began to come in from all over America. Flying saucer fever swept the country and the story became national, then international news. This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting - this was the birth of a phenomenon.

Just two weeks after Kenneth Arnold's sighting, something happened that was to eclipse his story and lead to arguably the biggest conspiracy theory of all time. On or around 2 July 1947, something crashed in the desert near a military base at Roswell, New Mexico. Military authorities at the base issued an extraordinary press release, which began "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". "Flying Disc captured by Air Force", screamed the headlines. Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed that the object they'd first thought was a "flying disc" was just a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch, before being discovered by a puzzled local.