Roswell gets all the glory. It has a UFO festival, a UFO museum, and a prominent place in the national mindset. Roswell happened back in 1947, but it wasn't really popularized until the late 1970s.
Before Roswell got famous, Socorro, N.M., made national news in 1964 after a very peculiar incident on an April evening.
Police officer Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeding car near the outskirts of town when he turned off to investigate a loud roaring sound and a flame in the sky. What he initially thought was a car turned over in an arroyo turned out to be what he described as a shiny whitish object, shaped like an "O" with legs.
Two figures the size of small adults were near the object, he said. As he got closer, the object rose up and flew away. Indentations and burn marks on the ground marked the spot to corroborate his report. You can read the full report from Zamora, copied from the U.S. government's Project Blue Book files.
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