jedioffsidetrap’s Reviews > How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth > Status Update

Illustrations:

For several nights in Aug 1951 residents of Lubbock TX saw formations of UFOs in ngt sky; photos taken, Lubbock Lights b/c UFO legend; USAF investig decided it was ground lgts reflected from migrating plovers (?)

Churchill note to Sec State for Air in summer 1952: “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth. Let me have a rpt at your convenience”

Illustrations:

Black spheres in aerial combat over Basel, Switzerland in Aug 1566

California newspaper illustration: large oblong propeller driven “phantom airship” w/searchlights that appeared o er Sacramento in Nov 1896. Press accts triggered an epidemic of similar sightings across N. America in spring 1897

London Sunday Dispatch headline, Oct 1, 1950 launched craze for seeing UFOs in British skies

Author: I set out to find the truth in the only way I knew. I wanted to be a journalist & decided to create a niche for myself by interviewing ppl who said they seen UFOs & those who had spent lives studying the subject.

22: …clues that emerged made me suspect the ultimate source of the mystery lay not inside the UFOs but w/the ppl who saw & believed in them.

Joseph Blumrich, The Spaceships of Ezekiel: a literal interpretation of Old Testament prophets vision of a fiery chariot that contained “wheels w/in wheels” & 4 angels

Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned (1919): obsessive collector of stories of strange/unexpl phenomena culled from 19c news accounts—lights in sky, vanishing ships & ppl…

Keel & Jacques Vallee argued that UFO exp were the latest manifestation of of more ancient stories that told of contact w/creatures from other worlds always been part of our myths & legends… emerged from realms that coexisted alongside ours, underground & in the sky…

New Year’s Eve same year: lead story on BBC 10 o’clock news was film footage from aircraft flying along east coast of NZ appearing to show UFOs

Christmas 1978: rpt from NZ of young pilot gone missing after radioing “a strange aircraft is hovering on top of me…it is hovering & it is not an aircraft”— no trace of pilot or plane ever found

Polls in U.S. & UK in late 70s: US 57% think UFOs real; UK 27%

In 1985 he surprised Gorbachev at summit in Geneva saying confident 2 superpowers would coop if earth attacked; taken aback G changed the subject.

Colin Powell, R’s dep natl sec advisor, told Cannon he was well aware of R’s occupation w/what he called “little green men.” P was convinced R comment to G was inspired by 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still

In 1982, Spielberg private screened ET for Reagan at White House—after R reportedly said, “And there are a number of people on this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.”

R was big sci fi fan per Lou Cannon’s bio of R; fave sub genre was alien invasion