On the evening of 13 March 1997 a line of lights crossed Arizona, seen by thousands of people over nearly five hundred kilometres, from Nevada to the Mexican border. Nearly every account agrees: five or seven lights in a fixed formation, moving slowly and without sound, and a dark mass between them that blotted out the stars. The military attributed it to flares dropped over the Barry Goldwater range, and for the later part of the evening that fits. For the first part, around half past eight, it does not: the formation crossed the city well before the exercise. The governor of the day, Fife Symington, mocked the story at a press conference. Ten years later he said he had seen the object himself and could not identify it.

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Rendlesham Forest

A Suffolk forest between two US air force bases where, over three nights in December 1980, servicemen reported lights and a landed object three times. The deputy base commander, Charles Halt, recorded events on a dictaphone in the forest itself and filed an official memorandum, later declassified. The Ministry of Defence stated there was no defence significance and the investigation ended there. It is called Britain's Roswell.