Dennis Stacy, Editor, MUFON UFO Journal original source The acronym UFO – for Unidentified Flying Object – is so prevalent and commonplace today, that it’s easy to forget the term is not even fully fifty years old yet. There is even some dispute about the acronym’s exact origin. In his classic account of his years spent as the director of Project Blue Book – the Air Force’s official UFO “investigation” agency – Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt says unequivocally that “UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words ‘flying saucers’” (Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Doubleday, 1956, p. 6). Presumably, this would have been sometime between 1951, when Ruppelt took over Project Grudge, later renamed Blue Book, and September of 1953, […] Read More
Tag: Charles Fort
It’s been almost fifty years since the modern era of UFO reports began, and in all that time and out of thousands (millions?) of UFO sightings, no definitive evidence regarding the nature of Our Shining Visitors has been found. Much has been alleged/hypothesized/theorized/dreamt during that time, but as of 1996, we are no closer to The Truth than Kenneth Arnold was in 1947. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is by far the most popular theory of UFO origins, but it presents many problems. As the great UFO waves of the late 1960s faded into history, many UFOlogists were left wondering if the “nuts and bolts” approach was really valid. They had abundant eyewitness reports, some landing traces, and even purported fragments of flying saucers, yet they […] Read More