by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
On Saturday, January 11, I paid a visit to David Marler at the new facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, housing the contents of the National UFO Historical Records Center. The NUFOHRC is a recently formed non-profit organization, and the facility consists of two buildings provided by Rio Rancho Public Schools on the campus of the Martin Luther King Elementary School. In one of the buildings is a treasure trove of, well, UFO Historical Records, including the case files of the big three in twentieth century UFO investigation: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, the Center for UFO Studies, and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. The APRO files had been in private hands since APRO ceased being active in 1988, and I was particularly eager to see those, as well as see the facility and offer congratulations to David. Read more
From the very beginning of the flying saucer/UFO mystery, Joseph Allen Hynek played a huge role as an investigator. According to him in his 1972 book, The UFO Experience, in 1947 he was asked to be a scientific consultant for the Air Force’s investigation program (which was then called Project Sign) based at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. He explains he was “then director of Ohio State University’s McMillan Observatory and, as such, the closest professional astronomer at hand.” He remained a scientific consultant for what operated as Project Sign, Project Grudge, and then Project Blue Book as of 1952, up until its termination in 1969. He went on with his own investigations, formed the Center for UFO Studies in 1973, and continued as its director until his death in 1986. In his almost 40 years of involvement with the mystery, Hynek’s beliefs and public stance evolved quite a bit. 
Amidst the reports of drone incursions over military bases and northern New Jersey, there was a story that made the news involving video footage reportedly taken by a co-pilot of an unidentified object in the sky above Manchester Airport in England, along with still shots of what was said to be the same object, seen to be a blue sphere, hovering over the tarmac. As is typical of UFO coverage in the news these days, when it’s not about what government officials think about the phenomenon, the origin of the story was a post on social media with no real names provided for the poster or the source. All that was left for those with an interest in the case was to conduct some rather imaginative analysis of the footage and argue back and forth over the possible alien origin of the object. 
