On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field public information officer Walter Haut, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disk"

which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The Unidentified Flying Object was a spacecraft containing extraterrestrial life most probably from a binary star of Zeta Reticuli Constellation 39 light years away

its occupants were captured

and the military engaged in a massive cover-up.
The Roswell incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name "Roswell" synonymous with UFOs. Roswell has become the most publicized of all alleged UFO incidents.