What Roswell Knows

YGBFKM is marking the 79th anniversary of the Roswell incident with a series of posts covering the original events, the official record, and the decades of fallout. Start anywhere.

Roswell: 79 Years of What We Don't Know
From a rancher's debris field in 1947 to a congressional hearing in 2026: the complete arc of the incident that won't stay closed. An interactive timeline covering 38 key events across five eras.

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.

The Long Silence (available July 9)
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.

The Mythology Machine (available July 10)
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.

Roswell Grows Up (available July 13)
What the myth became when it ran headlong into congressional hearings, declassified programs, and a government that had finally stopped denying everything.