July 8, 1947: What Happened In Roswell?

July 8, 1947: Something happened in Roswell, New Mexico, and it is still debated today.

Officially, personnel at Roswell Army Air Field -- it would be September 18 of that year before the U.S. Air Force was officially separated from the U.S. Army -- recovered metallic and rubber debris from a military balloon. They issued a press release announcing possession of a "flying disc."

This took place during the "flying disc craze," sparked by widespread media coverage of pilot Kenneth Arnold's alleged sighting, leading to hundreds of reports of "unidentified flying objects." That got abbreviated to "UFO." Unfortunately, "UFO" has come to mean "spacecraft from another planet," instead of its literal meaning: A flying object that has not been identified.

In the wake of media inquiries about the situation, the Army quickly retracted its earlier statement, stating that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon.

In the years to come, conspiracy theories claimed that debris from an alien spaceship had been covered up by the American federal government. Finally, in 1994, the Air Force told the truth: They released a report saying that the crashed object was a top secret nuclear test surveillance balloon, and they didn't want the Soviet Union to know about it. By 1994, there was no more Soviet Union.

Still, many people want to believe in "flying saucers" and extraterrestrial life. In the 1970s, no less than former Beatle John Lennon was one of several people who called in a sighting of a UFO in New York. And eventual President Jimmy Carter, then Governor of Georgia, claimed to have seen a UFO, admitting that he couldn't prove it was an alien spacecraft, but that it looked like what the reports of them did.

The legislation creating the National Security Act, including the CIA was already going through Congress when the Roswell incident happened. So, even though it was signed into law on July 26, it had nothing to do with this.

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July 8, 1947 was a Tuesday. There was only one score on this historic day: It was in baseball's All-Star Game, played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The American League beat the National League, 2-1. The starting pitchers were Hal Newhouser of the Detroit Tigers and Ewell Blackwell of the Cincinnati Reds.

Johnny Mize of the New York Giants hit a home run in the bottom of the 4th inning, for the NL's only run. In the top of the 6th, Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees grounded into a double play, but it got Luke Appling of the Chicago White Sox home with the tying run. The winning run came in the top of the 7th, when Stan Spence of the Washington Senators singled home Bobby Doerr of the Boston Red Sox. Frank "Spec" Shea of the Yankees was the winning pitcher, and Johnny Sain of the Boston Braves was the losing pitcher.