Posts Tagged ‘UFO’
“Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history”*…
50+ examples: “Evolution of Horror Movie Poster Designs: 1922 – 2009.”
* Robert Anton Wilson
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As we prepare to shriek, we might recall that it was on this date in 1947 that a secret executive order issued by President Harry Truman established Majestic 12, a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials empaneled to investigate UFO activity in the aftermath of the Roswell incident— or so many UFO conspiracy theorists believe. The purported documentary evidence of Majestic 12 has been judged fake by both the FBI and the Air Force (e.g., here)… but then, they would wouldn’t they…
“I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true”*…
In 1995, as part of the Walt Disney Company Presents series (that was hosted by Michael Eisner, doing his not-very-successful best to channel Walt), Disney aired “Alien Encounters.” A documentary that opens with footage of “an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence,” and the pronouncement that “intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race,” it only aired once.
* Frank Black (AKA Black Francis, of the Pixies)
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As we look to the skies, we might spare a thought for Gertrude Stein; she died on this date in 1946. An American ex-pat, Stein was an author, poet, and memoirist (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas). But she was probably most impactful and is best remembered as a hostess and mentor to a generation of writers (e.g., Hemingway,described her salon in A Moveable Feast) and artists (e.g., Picasso) in Paris, where– “the mother of us all”**– she held court for forty years.
Carl Van Vechten’s 1935 portrait of Stein
** The Mother of Us All was the title of a Virgil Thomson opera for which Stein wrote the libretto. And while the subject of the opera, Susan B. Anthony, certainly deserves the epithet, so, many have observed, did its author.
Kids say the darndest things…
Random panels from the newspaper comic Family Circus combined with random quotes from German philosopher, poet, composer, and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche at Losanjealous’ Nietzsche Family Circus.
As we savor sagacity in saplings, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1973 that future President (and then Georgia Governor) Jimmy Carter filed a report with the International UFO Bureau (and later, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena [NICAP]), describing an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that he and 10-12 others had seen outside a Lion’s Club meeting in Leary, Georgia, in October 1969. It was, the filing suggested, “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen… very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon…”
Carter pledged, during his 1976 Presidential campaign, to open the government’s UFO files if he was elected. In the event, he demurred, citing “national security.”
The signature page of Jimmy Carter’s UFO report (source)
