Roswell Grows Up
The Roswell mythology spent the 2000s losing its key witnesses and its fabricated evidence. Then the government quietly started studying UFOs again. Then it started admitting things. We still don't know what Mac Brazel found.
Investigative Series
The Mythology Machine
Between 1978 and 2000, Roswell transformed from a forgotten local incident into the defining UFO event in American history. Some of that transformation was accidental. Some of it was manufactured by people working for the government, who later confessed.
The Long Silence
For 30 years after the 1947 incident, the weather balloon explanation held. Not because it was convincing, but because the government built something to make it hold.
72 Hours in Roswell
On the morning of July 8, 1947, the U.S. Army announced it had captured a flying saucer. By evening, it hadn't. What happened in between, and in the nine days before, is one of the most documented non-explanations in American institutional history.