Great Falls

Great Falls and the Mariana Film

On 15 August 1950 Nick Mariana, who managed the local baseball team, saw two bright objects over the stadium with his secretary and got them on 16 mm film. The sixteen seconds he shot are among the first motion pictures of the phenomenon ever taken. The Air Force attributed the footage to sunlight reflecting off two F-94 fighters that passed over the town at about that time. Mariana replied that he had seen the aircraft separately and later, and claimed that the first frames — in which the objects were larger — were missing when the film came back from the military. The film survives and is still gone through frame by frame by both sides of the argument.