The Roswell incident refers to the variety of conspiracy theories concerning an actual event that occurred in 1947, pertaining to a crash which resulted in the recovery of metallic and rubber debris near Corona, New Mexico by United States Army Air Forces officers from Roswell Army Air Field.
On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a “flying disc”, which was reported in the local newspaper “Roswell Daily Record”. The Army quickly retracted the statement and said instead that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon.
The Roswell incident was not widely discussed until the late 1970s, when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel, in an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, said he believed the debris he retrieved was extraterrestrial in origin. A variety of conspiracy theories was proposed and published, claiming that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military, which then engaged in a cover-up of the site
British documentary about the Roswell incident
In 1997, the book “The Day After Roswell” was published. The book is a first-hand account of U.S Army Colonel Philip J. Corso, in which he claims to have been involved in the recovery and cover-up of a UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
According to Corso, the UFO was not of human origin, and the US government was able to reverse-engineer its technology to create many of the technological advancements of the 20th century, such as fiber optics and lasers. Corso also claims that the government has been covering up the true nature of the UFO and its technology for fear of the impact it would have on society
